Report shows Australian welfare recipients are struggling to survive

Vicki Mylonas

Australians relying on welfare payments such as JobSeeker and Youth Allowance face a life of deprivation and isolation, well below the poverty line, according to a recent report by the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS).

The dire situation for recipients of JobSeeker, Youth Allowance and other income support schemes is part of a deepening social crisis confronting the working class as a whole, amid soaring inflation and rising unemployment.

ACOSS’s Raise the Rate Survey 2024, released last month, paints a disturbing picture of vulnerable Australians struggling financially, physically and mentally as a result of the Labor government’s miserly welfare system.

Unemployed workers registering for social welfare outside Centrelink office in Sydney, Australia

Australia’s unemployment payment, JobSeeker, amounts to just $55 per day, less than half the minimum wage, while Youth Allowance is lower still, at $45 per day. Late last year, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recommended that Australia’s unemployment payments be increased, noting they were among the lowest of OECD countries and “remain below the relative poverty line.”

A growing number of Australians are having to rely on these paltry payments as unemployment rises. The official unemployment rate in August was 4.2 percent, meaning 625,000 workers were out of a job, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), while youth unemployment is far higher at 9.8 percent. A further 6.5 percent of the workforce is underemployed.

These figures have been increasing steadily since mid-2022 and are expected to continue rising. Moody’s economist Harry Murphy Cruise anticipates the official unemployment rate will increase to 4.5 percent by the middle of 2025.

ACOSS surveyed 760 people who receive JobSeeker, Youth allowance and other related payments, which are relied upon by more than 1.4 million workers and young people. One respondent spoke of having to choose between food and fuel. Others spoke of the dread they feel for their future, of being prisoners in their own homes, or of severe health deterioration due to being unable to afford medication, dental care or surgery.

The report’s “key findings” relate to housing costs, food as a discretionary item, physical and mental health issues, the high cost of energy bills, and trying to run a car on a low income, which traps people even more into poverty and unemployment.

The ACOSS report states: “Australia currently has the worst rental affordability on record and one of the highest rates of homelessness among wealthy countries. Australia’s supply of social housing is at a four-decade low.”

Ninety-four percent of those surveyed who rent privately are experiencing housing stress, having to pay more than 30 percent of their income in rent. Fifty-two percent pay more than half of their income in rent, defined as severe housing stress. With budgets already stretched, any increase in rent or an unexpected emergency expense can have severe implications, increasing people’s risk of homelessness.

The report shows that government rent assistance (an average of $211.20 per fortnight for a single person), is totally inadequate to cover the exorbitant cost of private rental. In its 2024‒2025 Federal Budget, the Albanese Labor government proclaimed that a million vulnerable Australian renters would reap the benefit of a $1.9 billion rental assistance package for those on welfare payments. This amounts to a dismal saving of around $22 per fortnight.

The 2024 Anglicare Australia Rental Affordability Snapshot confirms that rental affordability is in a state of crisis for those on low incomes and welfare payments. Out of the 45,115 rental listings surveyed in the Snapshot, only 289 (0.6 percent) were affordable for a person earning a full-time minimum wage, while just 160 (0.4 percent) were affordable for a couple with two children relying on JobSeeker.

A recent report by Suburbtrends shows that almost three-quarters of Australian suburbs are in “extreme rental pain,” and that this crisis is most acute in working-class areas. Rents across Australia surged 8.5 percent in the 12 months to May 2024.

Labor governments at the federal and state level, despite claiming to be addressing the cost-of-living crisis, are in fact spearheading both the decline in real wages and the soaring price of housing, together with the chronic underfunding of social and affordable housing. This is putting more Australians at risk of homelessness, including those who are employed.

The ACOSS report revealed that decent meals have become a luxury for many relying on income support. More than two-thirds of respondents have had to reduce their intake of fresh fruit, vegetables and meat, or even skip meals entirely.

“I usually eat twice a day, but sometimes once,” one respondent said, while parents reported skipping meals so that their children could eat. Those with special dietary requirements are forced to sacrifice their health, while many are having to rely on food banks or churches for food.

In its 2022‒2023 Hunger Report, charity organisation Foodbank revealed that 3.7 million Australian households were experiencing moderate to severe food insecurity. In total, the report concluded, “48 percent of the general population now feels anxious or struggles to consistently access adequate food,” up from 45 percent in 2022. More than three-quarters of food-insecure households had experienced this for the first time within the past 12 months.

This is a shocking indictment of the capitalist system, which prioritises the profits of corporate and finance capital over the health, wellbeing and rights of the working class. While more Australians across all demographics are finding it increasingly difficult to afford basic essentials such as food, massive profits have been recently recorded by the two major supermarket chains in Australia, Coles ($1.1 billion) and Woolworths ($1.7 billion).

Respondents to the ACOSS survey said that the inadequacy of the JobSeeker payment made it even more difficult to find work. This was sharply felt in regional areas and on the outskirts of major cities, where job opportunities are few and far between and public transport is essentially non-existent. Even getting to a job interview is a significant challenge without owning a car, a major expense for those reliant on welfare payments.

One worker surveyed said: “I’m unlikely to be able to get a car again, with no savings or other way to get a loan to buy a car—having no car rules out many jobs that are not on public transport routes, or start at 6:00 a.m. or are shift work, or require transport of tools or such.”

More than 80 percent of respondents said that relying on sub-poverty welfare payments harmed both their physical and mental health, with numerous respondents revealing they had contemplated taking their own lives.

One respondent said: “The rate of income support is obviously designed to drive us off the planet. It hurts when your leaders treat you as if you don’t deserve to live.”

Another said: “I can’t begin treatment for osteoporosis until I have my teeth fixed and, because of the length of the waiting list, that could be two years. My bones are deteriorating because I can’t afford dental treatment.”

As well as the inadequate level of welfare payments, this reflects a public health system in a profound state of crisis, due to decades of deliberate underfunding by both Labor and Liberal-National governments. This has been exacerbated by bipartisan “let it rip” COVID policies, responsible for tens of thousands of deaths and a large increase in hospitalisations.

US “debt bomb” ticking louder

Nick Beams

The increase in the US budget deficit for the fiscal year of 2024, announced by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) earlier this week, has raised decisive economic and political issues. While generally covered over in the official US election campaign, these are of decisive importance for the working class both in America and internationally.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell addresses House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, Wednesday, June 21, 2023. [AP Photo/Andrew Harnik]

The immediate economic question is: when will the rise in US government debt give rise to a crisis for the US dollar, a major meltdown in the market for debt, the Treasury bond market, or some other area of the financial system? Government debt is now heading towards $36 trillion and increasing at a pace which is regarded as “unsustainable” by Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, along with many others.

And flowing from this, how will the political establishment, whether the reins of government are in Democratic or Republican hands, respond to such a shock as they organise attacks on the working class to pay for a deep-seated crisis in the financial system?

According to the CBO, the US budget deficit for the fiscal year of 2024 rose to $1.8 trillion and hit its highest level for three years. That was only outstripped by the major expenditures as a result of the COVID pandemic, much of which went to the largest US corporations which also received massive support from the near-zero interest rates set by the Fed.

Deficits have been climbing sharply in recent years, but they have been considered manageable because of ultra-low interest rates. That situation has changed as a result of the interest rate hikes by the Fed, and it is indicated in the budget data.

Last year, the US government had to pay $950 billion in interest, a 34 percent increase of $240 billion from the year before. This is almost certain to go up in coming years.

Interest payments were higher than both the entire military budget of $826 billion or Medicare, $869 billion, and now comprise 14 percent of the entire budget. That is, one dollar out of every seven of government spending is made to the holders of government debt, meaning that borrowing is increasingly being used just to pay the interest bill on past debt.

The CBO has estimated that the debt will continue to rise dramatically in the immediate future and will be greater than $50 trillion by the end of this decade. By 2027 it calculated the size of the debt compared to the overall economy will exceed its all-time high of 106 percent of GDP, reached as a result of World War II.

That debt did not produce a crisis then because of the expansion of the US economy in the post-war boom. That experience is not going to be repeated because economic growth over the longer term is only around 2 percent. Moreover, the US is not the industrial powerhouse it was in the immediate post-war years, but is marked above all by the growth of financial parasitism.

Commenting on the latest numbers Doug Holtz-Eakin, the president of the conservative Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, put a spoke in the wheel of the Trump economic campaign with its claims that major tax cuts, combined with tariff hikes, will boost the US economy and bring down the deficit.

“You cannot grow your way out of this problem,” he said.

The US has only been able to lift its debt to extraordinary heights because of the role of the dollar as the international currency. But the dollar is no longer backed by gold, as a store of real value, but is a fiat currency. That is, it only functions as world money because it is considered to be backed by the power of the American state. If that confidence is undermined or wanes significantly then it can lead to a dollar crisis.

Such a crisis may not appear to be on the immediate agenda but as the late German-American economist Rudiger Dornbusch once noted: “The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.”

And there are clear indications that a crisis is developing. The price of gold, the ultimate store of value in the capitalist monetary system, is regularly reaching new record highs with numbers of central banks increasing their gold holdings. There is increasing nervousness in the US Treasury market as to whether it can absorb the increase in government debt and there has been lacklustre demand for new US debt at recent auctions.

There are also moves by a number of countries, including China, Brazil, Turkey and others, such as the US ally Saudi Arabia, to arrange trade transactions in currencies other than the American dollar.

This movement has attracted the attention of Donald Trump who recently warned that the loss of the dollar’s global status would be the equivalent of losing a war as he threatened to impose a 100 percent impost on goods from countries that sought to move out of the dollar system.

The underlying and mounting problems in the US economy and what they portend are receiving virtually no coverage in the so-called mainstream media. Just as they wave away the real danger of nuclear war with the claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin is bluffing, so they believe that if they just ignore the signs of a developing financial crisis, it will just go away.

According to Jason Furman, a former top aide in the Obama administration, and now at Harvard, there is no need for concern. “We’ve learned we borrow more than we could. And we’ve actually borrowed more than we expected,” he told the Wall Street Journal last month.

There is, however, some recognition in the upper echelons of financial circles that major problems are developing, including the growing deficit and the fact that inflation, leading to elevated interest rates, is a significant risk.

In two separate public appearances this week, reported by the Australian Financial Review, JP Morgan chief Jamie Dimon and hedge fund mogul Ray Dalio both sought to direct attention away from the issue of when and how big the next Fed interest rate cut might be.

Dalio said those who were looking for further large rate cuts were “getting ahead of themselves” and the risks were more to the upside than the downside as he pointed to what he called the “ticking time bomb of the debt situation” in the US.

Dimon said there should be concern about the US deficit, noting that in the early 1980s when inflation was 14 percent the deficit was 3.5 percent of GDP compared to 7 percent today. Total debt was 35 percent of GDP compared to about 100 percent at present.

Under conditions where military expenditure will increase whichever party wins the presidential election, the knives are being sharpened for a major attack on social services spending.

Both Kamala Harris and Trump have said they will not touch two of the biggest items in the budget, Social Security and Medicare. But election commitments are one thing, economics and finance are another.

Reflecting widely held views in the economic establishment, Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the right-wing Cato Institute, a long time advocated of so-called smaller government, told the Journal Medicare had to be made more efficient and Social Security benefits cut.

“Any fiscal plan that doesn’t address these programs is basically not addressing the root cause of higher spending,” she said.

The key issue is how this frontal assault on the working class is to be carried out. That question is also the subject of discussion behind closed doors in ruling circles as the debt crisis deepens.

A recent opinion piece by Mitch Daniels in the Washington Post entitled “The Day the Dollar Died is coming. What’s the plan?” provided some insight into those deliberations.

Daniels, a former Republican governor of Indiana, who served in both the Reagan and George W Bush administrations, framed his comment around a conference he said should be called “devoted to preparing a plan for the collapse of the US public debt market and the dollar’s world reserve status—and the economic and social consequences of such an event.”

He noted that with deficit close to $2 trillion and debts about to surpass the nation’s GDP, “only a dwindling number of denialists doubt that a cataclysmic reckoning, including double-digit damage to Americans’ income growth lies ahead.” It was “past time to prepare.”

The focus had to be planning for the day when, not if, “tens of millions of Americans are told that the trust funds are not trustworthy, and that the safety-net benefits they have been receiving are about to be reduced, perhaps drastically.”

Daniels warned that messages to an enraged public that they had to deal with the necessities of the situation would not suffice.

Economic collapse, he stated, would unleash violent reactions raising the question of which of the president’s “more than 100 unilateral powers might be needed.” This could include martial law and there had to be a plan to determine “what is and is not permitted by the language of the Insurrection Act [which Trump wanted to invoke in 2020], authorising the use of the military not just to ‘suppress the rebellion’ but also to suppress an ‘unlawful combination or conspiracy’ that ‘hinders the execution of the laws.’”

It would be a grave mistake to dismiss such analysis as “musings” with no real basis. In fact, these conclusions flow from the objective logic of economic and financial processes.

Social Inequality in Germany: Number of billionaires rises to 249

Marianne Arens

Rarely has social polarisation been so tangible. While poverty is growing, at the top end of the scale the number of super-rich is on the rise. The annual ranking by Manager Magazin shows that the number of billionaires in Germany has recently risen by 23 to 249.

Manager Magazin has published a list of the 500 richest Germans and calculated that their private assets and wealth in 2023 amounted to a record €1.1 trillion, an increase of €53 billion compared to the previous year.

This sum, €1.1 trillion, is almost two-and-a-half times the federal budget for the same year. This sum could be used to build thousands of schools and hospitals, renovate the country’s ailing rail network and balance the nursing care insurance deficit. It could also raise the wages of railway workers, nursing staff and other public employees who are continually forced to work for low wages.

In addition to the 249 billionaires in the country, there are over half a million millionaires, almost 3,000 of whom have now increased their financial wealth to over $100 million, as the Global Wealth Report 2022 has shown. This layer, a tiny minority of about 0.6 percent of the population, own 45 percent of the country’s total wealth.

For workers, on the other hand, the situation in Germany, is becoming increasingly precarious, as is the case worldwide. More and more people are slipping into low-wage work and poverty, while inflation is rising once again. One in five children and more than one in four young people live in poverty. While the government is intent on escalating its policy of imperialist war, it is allowing civil infrastructure to fall into disrepair and is arrogantly attacking the most socially vulnerable. In its 2024 war budget, the basic income allowances for the poor was cut by €5.5 billion.

Manager Magazin’s list of the super-rich is revealing. Among the top 10 are heirs and major shareholders of the same corporations that are currently enforcing mass layoffs, wage cuts and plant closures.

The Porsche family, for example, is ranked eighth richest with €19.3 billion, while mass layoffs and the closure of entire plants have been announced at Volkswagen and many contract workers have already been laid off. The continuity of the rich since the fascist era is also telling. Several of the richest families—Porsche, Klatten/Quandt, Schaeffler, Reimann, etc.—owe their wealth to the involvement of their ancestors in the Nazi regime.

The richest German is Dieter Schwarz, founder of the supermarket chains Lidl and Kaufland, with €43.7 billion. In second place are Susanne Klatten and Stefan Quandt, the BMW heirs, with €34.4 billion, followed by the Merck family, who possess €33.8 billion. The Reimann family (€31.3 billion) is followed by Klaus Michael Kühne, logistics entrepreneur and hotelier, with €29 billion. The Albrecht/Heister families of Aldi Süd (€27 billion), Henkel (€24.6 billion), Porsche, and Albrecht of Aldi Nord (€18.9 billion) come in 6th to 10th place. The 10 richest have a combined fortune of €262 billion.

The Würth family, with €13 billion, is also among the super-rich. Würth Elektronik, which is one of the most important auto suppliers, is in the process of closing its site in Schopfheim, with 300 employees.

Other auto suppliers that have been enforcing layoffs, short-time work and plant closures for many years include Schaeffler and Continental, which are largely owned by the Schaeffler family. With €7.7 billion, it ranks 25th. It is closely followed by the Thiele family from Knorr Bremse (€7.5 billion), the major shareholder in Lufthansa. During the coronavirus lockdown, the Lufthansa Group summarily cut thousands of pilots, flight attendants and ground staff and cut wages.

Other super-rich persons are so-called tech billionaires, above all the founders and owners of SAP, Hasso Plattner (€16.9 billion), Dietmar Hopp (€15.1 billion) and the Klaus Tschira family’s inherited fortune (€5.5 billion). The SAP group is also in the process of cutting 10,000 jobs.

At the same time, low-wage work is spreading, and poverty is rampant. Shortly after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the government—then still under Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) and Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD)—sent workers back to their workplaces despite the risk of infection. At the same time, it stuffed the pockets of the rich with its multi-billion coronavirus emergency package. Scholz is now chancellor, and the coronavirus crisis was followed by the war in Ukraine and, most recently, the war in the Middle East.

Immediately after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the coalition government in Berlin decided to put all its eggs in the war basket. Chancellor Scholz launched a €100 billion special fund for the German armed forces. Finance Minister Christian Lindner (Free Democratic Party, FDP) presented the government’s austerity and war budget, and Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) appointed himself “armaments industry minister.”

The immediate consequence of the war policy was a severe energy crisis and a trade war which has put massive pressure on German industry. Extensive wage cuts are being negotiated with the help of the German Trade Union Federation (DGB), which is firmly in the camp of imperialism, based on its nationalist “Standort” policy. Layoffs are being enforced and factories closed. In the automotive and supplier industry alone, this affects hundreds of thousands of workers.

New Japanese PM dissolves parliament, calls snap election

Ben McGrath

New Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba dissolved the lower house of parliament on Wednesday to call a snap general election for October 27. None of the major issues affecting the Japanese working class will be addressed by the parties in their campaigns, least of all Tokyo’s growing preparations for war with China. Official campaigning will begin on October 15.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba speaks during a news conference in Tokyo, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024 [AP Photo/David Mareuil]

Ishiba took office on October 1 after being elected president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) a few days earlier. He replaced outgoing PM Fumio Kishida, who stepped down after three years in office as his government’s popularity fell amid scandals and growing opposition to Tokyo’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Having come to power in a party vote dominated by the LDP’s parliamentary members, Ishiba hopes the general election will provide a “mandate” for his government’s far-right and pro-war agenda. He stated on October 7, “Since the new Cabinet was formed, I judge it necessary to dissolve [the lower house] to confirm the will of the people.” The next election was not due until October 2025.

The lower house of the National Diet, or parliament, consists of 465 seats. The ruling coalition of the LDP and its junior partner Komeito currently have control over 255 seats and 32 seats respectively and are supported by three “independents.” On Wednesday, the LDP announced that it had endorsed 279 candidates for the upcoming election. Komeito is a right-wing Buddhist party that has served in LDP-led coalition governments since 1999.

Mass support for the LDP’s policies does not exist in Japan. Kishida’s government backed Israel’s genocide against Gaza, which is now expanding into Lebanon, and Ishiba will continue to do so. The genocide and Tokyo’s support for it have been met with protests since last year. Furthermore, workers are opposed to the government’s economic policies as real wages continue to decline due to inflation. Wages rose slightly in June and July, an effect of summer bonuses—the first increases in 27 months—then fell again by 0.6 percent in August.

Ishiba has placed a heavy emphasis on Japan’s remilitarisation, which is aimed at China—a policy that also lacks public support. He has continuously echoed Kishida, claiming, “Today’s Ukraine may be tomorrow’s East Asia,” a phrase Ishiba repeated in his first parliamentary speech as prime minister last Friday. In other words, he is promoting the lie that Beijing is planning an “unprovoked” war against Taiwan, in order to justify the US-led military build-up throughout Asia against China and to goad Beijing into a war over the island.

Ishiba no doubt assumes the LDP will easily coast to victory in the upcoming election. While the LDP is unpopular, the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP), which currently holds 98 seats, is even more so. The working class has not forgotten the three years the Democrats were in office from 2009 to 2012, during which they reneged on all major social pledges, while similarly supporting the US-led war preparations against China. Since then, the Democrats have put forward no serious opposition to the LDP.

A CDP victory would not block Japan’s remilitarisation. Despite the party’s posturing, the Democrats have backed both the US/NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and Israel’s genocide against Gaza. Pledges to repeal the highly unpopular 2015 military legislation, which allows Japan to take part in military conflicts overseas in the name of so-called “collective self-defence,” are also not worth the paper on which they are printed. Newly elected CDP head Yoshihiko Noda stated while campaigning for party leadership last month that a potential CDP government would not repeal the laws.

Other so-called “left-wing” parties, such as the Stalinist Japanese Communist Party (JCP), do little more than act as appendages of the CDP, providing it with a phony “progressive” veneer.

None of these parties will offer any resistance to Ishiba’s new cabinet, which consists of four former defence ministers. This includes Ishiba himself, whose career has been focused on the military. Yoshimasa Hayashi, who remains chief cabinet secretary from Kishida’s cabinet, briefly served as defence minister in 2008.

New Defence Minister Gen Nakatani previously served in the role under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe from 2014 to 2016 and oversaw the ramming through parliament of the 2015 military legislation. As part of a delegation led by Ishiba, Nakatani visited Taiwan in August, meeting with President Lai Ching-te and expressed his support for Taipei in a war against Beijing.

New Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya also served as defence minister under Abe, from 2018 to 2019. Iwaya fully backs strengthening bilateral military ties with South Korea and trilateral ties between the two countries and the United States. In August 2023, Fumio Kishida established a de facto trilateral military alliance during a meeting with US President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol at Camp David near Washington. Ishiba will undoubtedly maintain this relationship.

Ishiba has also pledged to revise the US-Japan security treaty to give Tokyo more of an independent military role in the Indo-Pacific, called for US nuclear weapon sharing with Japan, and the formation of an “Asian NATO” which would be directed against China.

The idea of an “Asian NATO,” however, has received pushback in Washington, as it would cut across the fraudulent US claims to defend the “free and open” Indo-Pacific while not explicitly targeting China. Katrin Fraser Katz, an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), complained that Ishiba’s proposal did not match the policies of Abe or Kishida. She claimed of US strategy at an October 3 seminar, “The beauty of it, the flexibility of it, is ‘We’re not anti-China.’”

The comment is absurd. Washington has continuously goaded Beijing over Taiwan, challenging the One China policy stating that Beijing is the legitimate government of all China including the island. The US and Japan have de facto recognised that policy by maintaining formal diplomatic relations with Beijing alone. The US military has encouraged and overseen Philippine naval operations in the South China Sea that have led to clashes around disputed features, disputes that have been whipped up over the last 15 years by Washington. All of this is aimed at making Beijing “fire the first shot.”

Ishiba was quick to reassure Washington. Speaking with Biden by phone on October 2, he emphasised that his administration would work to strengthen the US-Japan military alliance along the lines established first by Abe and furthered by Kishida. This includes increasing military spending to two percent of GDP by 2027 and amending Article 9 of the constitution, which formally bars Japan from going to war overseas or maintaining a military.

Plans for rewriting Article 9 have been in the works for years, with the supporters of Abe proposing that a new paragraph be added to explicitly recognise Japan’s military, the Self-Defence Forces. However, Ishiba wants to go further and supports removing Article 9 altogether.

Autumn COVID wave develops in Germany

Tamino Dreisam

An autumn coronavirus wave has been developing in Germany for several weeks, as is shown by all indicators. The German government’s infection radar, which analyses the viral load in wastewater based on data from over 100 sewage treatment plants, shows that the incidence of infection had only fallen minimally compared to the summer wave. In recent weeks, the numbers have risen again significantly.

A woman walks past an abandoned coronavirus test center in Frankfurt, Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. Numbers of coronavirus infections are rising again in Germany. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

At the peak of the summer wave in July, the viral load was 118,000 gene copies per litre of wastewater. At the beginning of August, it fell to 103,000 and is currently at 163,000 gene copies. Overall, the viral load was therefore more than twice as high throughout the summer as the previous year.

According to estimates by GrippeWeb, a portal of the Robert Koch Institute public health body, the current COVID-19 incidence rate in the population is around 1,400 per 100,000 inhabitants. This means that 1.4 percent of the German population is infected with the virus every week. The increase is steep. The previous week the incidence was 1,200, at the beginning of August it was 600.

In Bavaria, wastewater monitoring shows an even more significant increase. In Munich, for example, the viral load in wastewater has more than doubled compared to the previous week and is thus higher than it has been since the beginning of the year. The Oktoberfest, which, with its 6.7 million visitors, served as a two-week-long superspreader event, bears central responsibility for this. In Rhineland-Palatinate, the State Investigation Office reported a 78 percent increase in the number of cases compared to the previous week.

Various other indicators from the federal government’s infection radar also show a sharp rise in the number of infections. For example, the number of visits to the doctor due to acute respiratory illnesses with COVID-19 is two to three times higher than in the summer, at 89 per 100,000 inhabitants per week.

The number of hospitalisations due to severe respiratory illness with COVID-19 stands at a seven-day incidence of 2.2, which is three times higher than at the beginning of July. The number of deaths, which currently stands at 80 per week, has also tripled compared to the beginning of July.

Virologist and specialist in microbiology and infection epidemiology Timo Ulrichs told Focus Online: “An autumn wave could well be imminent, and the new fitness of the sub-variant KP.3.1.1 could also contribute to this.”

KP.3.1.1, a successor to the JN.1 lineage, is already dominant in several countries and does, indeed, play a central role in the current autumn wave in Germany.

A new study by Japanese scientists published in the medical journal The Lancet states: “KP.3.1.1 has a significantly higher reproduction number than its predecessors KP.2, KP.2.3 and KP.3.” The predecessor variants KP.2 and KP.3 had already led to an increase in infections in the summer months, although the weather conditions are less favourable for the spread of the disease in summer than in winter.

In Germany, KP.3.1.1 currently accounts for 43 percent of infections and is therefore predominant. At the same time, the recombinant subline XEC has a share of 28 percent—and the trend is rising. XEC was first discovered in Germany in June and has spread from there to 27 countries. Virologists estimate that it has around twice the growth advantage of KP.3.1.1 and will be the dominant variant in winter.

Above all, the emergence of new variants disproves the lie that the pandemic is over. In fact, the pandemic is not over, and it is only a matter of time before an even deadlier variant emerges. Contrary to the claims made by politicians and the media, COVID-19 is therefore in no way comparable to influenza.

The State Statistical Office of Baden-Württemberg recently published figures investigating precisely this. It concluded that a total of 186 people died from influenza in Baden-Württemberg in 2023. At the same time, 3,343 deaths from coronavirus were recorded, i.e. almost 18 times as many. And this in the year in which all protective measures were ended with the argument that the pandemic was over.

In the summer months, the difference in the number of deaths was even more pronounced. While five people died of the flu in Baden-Württemberg from June to August 2023, there were 128 coronavirus deaths, 25 times as many.

Currently, around 12 percent of all people who have to be treated in hospital for a respiratory illness are there because of a coronavirus infection.

The director of virology at the Technical University of Munich, Ulrike Protzer, said: “Coronavirus is not a cold, and it won’t become one. Just like RSV and influenza, the virus penetrates particularly deep into the lungs, attacks the respiratory tract more strongly and can also affect other organs in the body.”

Unlike RSV and influenza, coronavirus also carries a high risk of long-term effects that can impact almost any organ and can also have a devastating impact on basic abilities such as moving, seeing or working. The probability of acquiring Long COVID is around 10 percent with the first infection and increases with each subsequent infection.

Exposing the population to the coronavirus forever and allowing the people to be infected again and again can therefore only mean degrading and destroying the health and lives of millions of people in the long term.

Pakistan uses “anti-terrorism” law to ban Pashtun group protesting military’s manifold crimes

Zayar

Pakistan’s government has proscribed the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (Pashtun Defence Movement)—a Pashtun nationalist organization that has led mass protests against military repression—under the country’s draconian anti-terrorism laws.

Pakistani authorities are now mounting a sweeping and increasingly violent crackdown to prevent the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement or PTM from convening a three-day Pashtun National Jirga (assembly) at various sites in the predominantly Pashtun province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, starting this Friday, Oct. 11.

According to the PTM, three of its activists were killed and dozens more injured Wednesday when police attacked and opened fire on people at a Jirga campsite.

Hundreds more have been arrested and roads blockaded as security forces attempt to prevent PTM supporters and others wishing to participate in the Jirga from reaching Bannu and other Jirga sites. The full extent of the repression cannot be known because the authorities are disrupting cell phone and internet services.

However, it is highly likely that there will be further violent clashes.

PTM leader Manzoor Pashteen addressing a rally in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's capital and largest city, in 2018 [Photo: Pashtun Tahaffuz/Facebook]

On Sunday, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz)-led federal government declared the PTM an “unlawful” organization under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997. The Interior Ministry order announcing the outlawing of the PTM claimed that it was engaged in “activities which are prejudicial to the peace and security of the country.”

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and Amnesty International have condemned the ban on the PTM. In its statement, the HRCP said that the PTM “is a rights-based movement that has never resorted to violence … This extreme decision was neither transparent nor warranted.”

Even before the imposition of the ban, the authorities were engaged in sweeping repression against the PTM. Last week security forces carried out multiple raids on Jirga campsites to make arrests, and set one campsite on fire.

PTM leaders have been repeatedly detained. Now, under the provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act, several PTM office-bearers and activists have had their bank accounts frozen and been stripped of the legal right to travel outside the country.

PTM leader Manzoor Pashteen announced the convening of the Jirga at the conclusion of a days-long funeral procession, in which tens of thousands participated, for Gilaman Pashteen Wazir, a Pashtun nationalist poet and acerbic critique of the Pakistani military and state. On July 11, Wazir succumbed to the head injuries he suffered during a savage beating believed to have been carried out by, or at the instigation of, the security forces.

The murdered Pashtun nationalist poet Hazrat Naeem, who used the pen name Gilaman Pashteen Wazir. Gilaman is the Pashtun word for "complaint." [Photo: Wikipedia]

Founded in 2018, the PTM has won a mass following by criticizing the brutal and patently illegal methods the Pakistan security forces have used in waging their dirty war against Islamist insurgents. That is, to suppress forces that were nurtured—organized, financed and armed—by Pakistani military-intelligence in alliance with US imperialism to overthrow the Soviet-backed government of Afghanistan, and that the Pakistani ruling class has long used as instruments of its predatory foreign and domestic agendas.

For more than two decades, particularly in what was known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas till it was incorporated into Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa in 2018, the security forces of the Pakistani state and their US allies have run amok in the name of suppressing the Pakistan Taliban.

Numerous villages in North and South Waziristan have been destroyed in scorched-earth military operations, the population terrorized by US drone strikes, and tribes and villages subjected to various colonial-style forms of collective punishment. As is their practice across Pakistan, the security forces have also made frequent use of forced disappearances and summary executions against those deemed government opponents.

These atrocities caused millions to migrate to urban areas, with many forced to take refuge in poorly equipped, makeshift internal displacement camps. Although no longer in danger of being caught in the cross-fire, the internally displaced Pashtun have continued to be viewed suspiciously by the authorities and subject to state surveillance and harassment.

Popular anger against the government and military in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has increased still further over the past year. Key reasons for this are: the Pakistani authorities’ reactionary campaign to expel Afghan refugees; their disruption of cross-border travel and trade with Afghanistan (many Pakistani Pashtuns have family in Afghanistan’s predominantly Pashto-speaking south); and, last but not least, their launching of yet another military campaign to eradicate the Pakistan Taliban insurgency.

As a result, prior to the PTM’s designation as a “terrorist” organization, a wide range of political forces had said they would participate in this week’s Jirga. Some continue to vow they will do so.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI, Pakistan Movement for Justice) of jailed opposition leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan, forms the government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP).

Initially it tried to disassociate itself from the repression directed against the PTM. But this has changed dramatically in recent days and is no doubt connected to last weekend’s 24-hour “disappearance” (detention by the military) of the PTI Chief Minister of KP, Amin Gandapur. He and several other PTI leaders were seized while leading a protest in the national capital, Islamabad, demanding Imran Kahn’s release.

On Tuesday, the KP government prohibited all government officials and employees from participating in the Jirga and warned that they and any members of the public who do so will be subject to criminal prosecution. Although the PTM leadership is opposed to the Pakistan Taliban (TTP)—indeed, it accuses sections of the military-intelligence apparatus of colluding with it—the KP government order claimed that the TTP is supporting the Jirga and “therefore any participation, overt or covert, will make the individual so participating [a] facilitator/supporter of a terrorist organisation.”

The false claim that the PTM is in cahoots with the TTP is also being made by the federal government.

Separately, KP government spokesman Barrister Saif gave full support to the ban on the PTM, and the brutal and criminal methods the military employs in defending the capitalist state. “The federal government,” he proclaimed, “has declared an organisation as proscribed. We are the defenders of Pakistan and its flag and Constitution. We are proud of the actions and sacrifices of the defence agencies against terrorism.” 

The multi-dimensional crisis roiling Pakistani capitalism

The violent suppression of the PTM and its Pashtun National Jirga is the product of a multi-faceted crisis of the Pakistani bourgeoisie and it state.

To avert state bankruptcy, the PML (N) federal government is having to implement yet another round of savage International Monetary Fund (IMF) austerity and accelerate a sweeping privatization drive.

Having been brought to power through an election last February manifestly manipulated by the military and state bureaucracy to prevent Imran Khan and his right-wing Islamic populist PTI from returning to power, the government is widely viewed as illegitimate. It and the ruling class as a whole fear the sudden eruption of mass popular opposition, above all from the working class, as chased Gotobaya Rajapakse from the Sri Lankan presidency in 2022 and toppled Bangladesh’s Awami League government at the beginning of August.

Meanwhile, the military, long the bulwark of the state and the US-Pakistani strategic partnership, is popularly reviled for its corruption, ill-gotten wealth and power, hostility to democracy, systematic human rights abuses and reactionary intrigues with US imperialism.

In addition to the simmering Pakistan Taliban insurgency, the Pakistani state is being roiled by a longstanding and increasingly audacious nationalist insurgency in its resource-rich, yet poorest province, Balochistan. This insurgency is fueled by genuine and deep-rooted popular grievances, but is based on a reactionary, pro-imperialist and ethno-exclusivist program. With the aim of securing US imperialist patronage, the Balochi insurgents are targeting Chinese workers and infrastructure. In the latest attack carried out by the Baloch Nationalist Army, two Chinese workers were killed Sunday in a Karachi airport bus bombing.

Even more destabilising is the global geopolitical situation, as US imperialism pursues global war. Pakistan’s neighbours China and Iran are two of Washington’s principal military-strategic targets, and India, Islamabad’s historic arch-rival, is being lavished by the US with advanced weaponry and other strategic favours in return for it harnessing itself ever more fully to the US war drive against China.

The PTM’s nationalist program and the aim of its “Pashtun National Jirga” initiative

While the emergence of the PTM is indicative of growing popular disaffection with the political establishment and especially its bloated, US-trained military-security apparatus, its Pashtun nationalist politics offer no way forward for Pakistani workers and toilers.

The PTM promotes the reactionary conception that Pashtuns are victims of “Punjabi oppression” and counterposes to it the unity of all Pashtuns, that is the subordination of the workers and toilers to the Pashtun bourgeoisie.

Thus, it is actively encouraging participation in its Jirga of right-wing Pashtun politicians and parties that supported the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and have participated in governments that have imposed IMF austerity.

Although the PTM denounces the human rights abuses of the Pakistani military in blunt terms, it says little about the role of US imperialism in transforming Afghanistan and Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas into killing fields.

It does not call for an end to the Washington-Islamabad military-strategic alliance, let alone the development of a global anti-war movement against imperialism and the predatory designs of all the great powers.

Hitherto, the PTM has focused on demands relating to “forced disappearances” and other abuses of the military, and, along with a wide swathe of opposition parties, from the Islamicist JIU-F to the Baluchi nationalists, opposed the military’s new anti-insurgency offensive.

With the Jirga, however, it aimed to begin discussion on a broader political agenda, including—if not yet fully articulated—for a Greater Pashtun nation, whether within or without Pakistan.

According to the publicly announced agenda, its first day is to be devoted to a “Presentation of data on war damages, military operations, and live testimonies from affected communities.” The second day, which would be closed to the public, calls for “delegates from 80 camps” to “engage in discussions on governance, human rights, and socio-economic conditions,” and during the third day a “Pashtun National Jirga Organizing Committee” is to be elected and ”resolutions for collective action” presented.

The agenda further explains that the Jirga will deliberate on how to advance “the self-governance of Pashtun lands,” “protect the right of Pashtuns to make decisions about their own future,” and safeguard “the territorial integrity of Pashtun lands.”

In a statement that is clearly indicative of the latent anti-imperialist sentiment among the Pashtun and Pakistani masses as a whole, the explanation notes add, “A core objective of the Jirga is to prevent the recurrence of foreign-imposed conflicts, especially the specter of a renewed “Dollar-sponsored war” on Pashtun soil. After decades of suffering from wars that have caused devastation and displacement, the Jirga will offer a unified Pashtun response to external forces seeking to destabilize the region once again.”

The crisis that faces the masses of Pakistan and Afghanistan irrespective of ethnicity or religion is the outcome of: 1) a systemic crisis of global capitalism; 2) continuing imperialist oppression, and 3) the reactionary communalist Pakistan project. Its realization was the outcome, through the joint actions of the rival factions of the colonial bourgeoisie represented by the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League, of the suppression of the mass anti-imperialist movement that convulsed the subcontinent for three decades beginning in 1917.

The very real threat that South Asia and the world will be dragged into a “dollar-sponsored” war, that is a war triggered by the drive of a crisis-ridden US imperialism to reassert global hegemony, cannot be opposed on a nationalist-capitalist basis.

US Department of Justice investigation finds Texas juvenile detention system tortures children

Chase Lawrence

The US Department of Justice released a devastating report on August 1 on the juvenile detention system in Texas, which is maintained by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD), detailing rampant and systemic physical, sexual and psychological abuse of children by TJJD staff under the guise of rehabilitation and reintegration.

A little over two months after the report was released, Shandra Carter, executive director of the TJJD, was given a $34,000 pay raise by the TJJD board, resulting in a total salary of $261,352, confirming the abuse is in fact the policy of the government. The agency houses 66 percent of incarcerated children in the state.

The children against whom the state government commits these crimes are some of the most vulnerable in society, who are, on average, seven grades behind their peers. Ninety-one percent of the girls incarcerated are identified as clear or possible concerns for being victims of sex trafficking.

The titles of the report’s chapters give an idea of the crimes committed by the TJJD against these children.

The first chapter is titled, “TJJD uses excessive force on children,” and it has the subchapters “1.1 TJJD harms children by using pepper spray excessively and without adequate decontamination procedures,” and “1.2 TJJD harms children by using excessive physical force and dangerous  restraint techniques.”

The Justice Department report says that the TJJD uses force that causes “the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain,” which it correctly states “violates the Constitution.”

A review of video footage and incident reports revealed staff routinely use force that causes “the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain” and is “excessive to any legitimate government purpose. This violates children’s constitutional rights.” Staff used pepper spray on numerous occasions in 2022 on children, with little to no attempt to “engage verbally” with the children in question. Some of the children were handcuffed at the time.

More recently, former TJJD staff Ron Jackson was charged with assault and indicted on the charge of official oppression in February 2024 after both surveillance camera and body camera footage showed him “lift a child up and slam him to the floor, causing a laceration above the child’s eye and a concussion.”

In another instance, two Evins [Regional Juvenile Center in Edinburg] staff were charged with criminal offenses after body cam and surveillance footage showed them “slamming a child’s head into a brick pillar, knocking him unconscious.” The child was handcuffed with his hands behind his back. To add insult to injury, one of the staff allegedly turned off their body cameras and spat on the child before they dragged the boy to solitary confinement (called RSU).

Other instances of physical abuse include the use of dangerous physical restraint typically used by police forces, such as kneeling on children's backs and torsos, which can easily lead to cardiac arrest. Numerous people are killed each year in such a manner by police in the US, such as in the infamous case of George Floyd in 2020 by Minneapolis police in Minnesota and Kenneth Knotts in 2023 in Texas.

Chapter 2 is titled “TJJD harms children through excessive use of isolation.” Its subchapters include “2.1 Children spend excessively long periods in RSU under unnecessarily restrictive conditions.” Subchapter 2.2 reads “Children are isolated for excessively long periods of time in the general population units.”

The report cites from the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, which stated in a 2016 position statement that for children, “time spent in solitary confinement [is] even more difficult and the developmental, psychological, and physical damage more comprehensive and lasting. They experience time differently—a day for a child feels longer than a day to an adult—and have a greater need for social stimulation.”

Of note is a section of the report which states that “Although TJJD policy appropriately limits most initial RSU admissions to one to two hours, we found many instances where children spent days or weeks in the RSU. In some cases, TJJD placed children there for non-behavioral reasons.” It further notes that children typically spent “22-23 hours a day in their cells, with some children spending twenty-four hours a day there.” Children are regularly spending 17-22 hours per day alone locked in their cells in general population units as well.

It is worth citing an excerpt from the United Nations Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on this specific part: 

The Mandela Rules, updated in 2015, are a revised minimum standard of UN rules that defines solitary confinement as “the confinement of prisoners for 22 hours or more a day without meaningful human contact.” Solitary confinement may only be imposed in exceptional circumstances, and “prolonged” solitary confinement of more than 15 consecutive days is regarded as a form of torture.

Under the definition provided by OHCHR and the Justice Department’s findings, it can be reasonably said that the Texas government is routinely and consistently torturing children in its detention centers.

Chapter 3’s title reads “TJJD fails to adequately protect children from sexual abuse” with 3.1 reading “TJJD fails to prevent staff from sexually abusing children.”

There are extensive details from the TJJD’s Office of Inspector General on the numerous cases of sexual abuse of children by TJJD staff, including inappropriate relationships, “grooming and predatory behavior,” “kissing,” some of which have led to prosecutions.

This includes the case of an Evins staffer who was “indicted on charges of indecency with a child, improper sexual activity with a person in custody, and violation of the civil rights of a person in custody” in April 2024, for an incident in July 2021. The report notes that on-site observers from the DOJ are “consistent with the Office of Inspector General’s findings about inappropriate relationships between staff and children.”

The report also notes that the TJJD fails to “provide adequate mental health care” despite most children in the facility having “serious mental health needs, including histories of trauma, requiring treatment.” The inadequate mental healthcare puts them at “serious risk of harm” according to the report.

Children are also treated with a “one-size-fits-all” suicide prevention program which the report says “increases the risk of harm to children.”

Children with disabilities are also not evaluated for said disabilities, and TJJD “systematically reduces, changes, or eliminates special education and related services, ignoring children’s individualized needs.”

That the US ruling class engages in such barbaric treatment of children betrays its fraudulent claims to be fighting for so-called “freedom” and “democracy” in Ukraine, the Middle East, China or anywhere else for that matter, and demonstrates that capitalism is incompatible with the defense of basic democratic rights.