Covid Variant Chaos in the UK

Kenneth Surin

The UK has a “roadmap” for lifting its Covid lockdowns and restrictions.

These were eased in parts of Scotland on Saturday 5 June; in Wales on Monday 7 June; in England, the final stage in the roadmap for lifting its lockdown is due no earlier than 21 June (though the spread of the Delta/Indian variant in parts of England is causing the government to consider revising its plans); and in Northern Ireland, the next review is due on Thursday 10 June.

There has been a great deal of confusion about what exactly each phase of the lockdown involves. For instance, at present groups of up to 30 can meet outdoors in England, but members of my family in the UK say this rule has been impossible to implement on a busy evening in a pub’s beer garden—with people moving around it is impossible to say which group is which.

Just as confusing is the UK government’s “traffic light list” for travel abroad, which classifies countries as green, amber or red — with different rules for quarantine and Covid tests.

Portugal was placed on the “green list” initially, but was removed from it after 2 weeks. The relegation of Portugal from a “green”, restriction-free travel destination to an “amber” one, means the UK government now advises against visiting the country, and requires returning travelers from Portugal to self-isolate for 10 days upon return.

Understandably, Brits who made plans in advance for vacations in Portugal are furious— hardly of these vacationers had factored-in the need for a 10-day quarantine upon returning home, and many had not banked-up enough paid leave to accommodate the quarantine.

Towns in Portugal catering to British tourists are likewise angry at this travel clampdown, and the Portuguese government has demanded that the UK justify its seemingly arbitrary decision to downgrade Portugal on the travel list.

The spread of the more infectious Delta/Indian variant in the UK was due to another inconsistency on the part of the government. In early April, Bangladesh and Pakistan were added to the “red list” despite having infection rates that were far lower than in India. India was only added to the list 3 weeks later.

Boris “BoJo” Johnson is angling for a post-Brexit trade deal with India, and the delay in adding India to the travel “red list” is attributed by some to BoJo’s desire to ingratiate himself with India’s leader Narendra Modi.

The number of people carrying the Delta/Indian variant in the UK grew during those 3 weeks, and the UK now has the biggest outbreak of the Delta variant outside of India.

Other hurdles confront the lifting of the UK’s Covid restrictions.

As is the case with the US, the UK’s hospitality sector is facing severe staff shortages just as it is trying to recoup losses incurred over the past year. Customers with cash saved during lockdowns are returning, but many staff members have not.

The hospitality industry has long relied on EU migrants, and the coincidence of Covid and Brexit has contributed to critical staff shortages.

An estimated 1.3 million non-UK workers have left Britain since late 2019, many opting to ride-out the pandemic in their country of origin. With travel restrictions still in situ, and harsher post-Brexit migration policies introduced by BoJo’s xenophobic government, the prospects of EU residents coming to the UK for employment are much reduced.

At the same time, UK nationals working in bars and restaurants are not returning to work in significant enough numbers— these places have been the sites of previous Covid surges, and so while laid-off hospitality workers continue to receive furlough payments, the risks involved in going back to work in places paying low wages with stressful conditions, and faced with a history of Covid outbreaks, are likely to be outweighed by other considerations.

BoJo’s government is itching to end this furlough, but is not likely to do so while overall UK unemployment is relatively high.

Studies published by the Department for Education, show substantial regional disparities in the impact of the disruption to UK schooling resulting from the pandemic, with students in some parts of the less wealthy parts of the country losing twice as much learning over the same time-frames as those in the more affluent London.

The government’s plans for more investment in catch-up efforts intended to overcome these disparities are inadequate, and the UK’s education recovery chief, Sir Kevan Collins, resigned in disgust at the government’s £1.4bn/$1.63bn catch-up fund for children who lost learning during lockdowns.

Collins, appointed to the job just 4 months ago, said the sum “does not come close to meeting the scale of the challenge”. Collins had called for £15bn/$17.5bn of funding and 100 extra hours of teaching per student.

The government’s plans equate to about £50 per student per year, while other countries have provided more extensive and longer-term support. The total level of funding for education recovery in England (taking into account funding announced previously) amounts to about £300/$350 per student, which is underwhelming compared to the £1,600/$1,862 per student in the US and £2,500/$2,900 in the Netherlands.

The rickety criminal justice system was further undermined by the closure of courtrooms during the pandemic, and the scale of the problem is reflected in the government’s recent decision to allow the Lord Chief Justice to request unlimited funding to open-up more courtrooms in England and Wales.

The lockdowns exacerbated the growing crisis of mental health– an estimated 10 million people need mental health support as a direct consequence of the pandemic. There has been a steep rise in anxiety, depression, social isolation, loneliness, substance abuse, and trauma. Given that it takes years to train healthcare professionals, increased funding to expand their number will have little to show in coming years.

The NHS entered the pandemic already overextended by Tory austerity, resulting in the longest funding squeeze in its history, but the burden on mental health services is predicted to last for years. There have also been calls from leading medical organizations for frontline NHS staff to receive support similar to that given to war veterans.

Waiting lists for hospital treatment are now at the highest number on record–  4,950,297people in England are on the waiting-list for hospital treatment. That figure rose by over 250,000 in just one month– between February and March– as patients who were reluctant to go to NHS facilities during the pandemic, or who could not access it because of the extended suspension of standard care, took advantage of the pandemic’s lull to see their doctors and finally get referred to hospital.

Experts say the waiting list could reach 10 million by 2024. Hospital administrators say staff shortages, workers exhausted after Covid and sickness absences, some caused by pandemic-related mental health problems such as PTSD, will hamper the response to the backlog.

Pro-Tory newspapers such as the Daily Mail and Express titles have begun highlighting the long delays cancer patients face, as well as people with cardiac problems and incapacitating conditions such as arthritis, including those who need a new hip or knee.

Policy dictates that patients should be treated within 18 weeks, but NHS statistics show that the number of those forced to wait at least a year has careered from 3,097 in March 2020 to 436,127 in the same month in 2021.

Sceptics believe this underfunding of the NHS by the Tories is deliberate. That is, run-up waiting lists so that frustrated patients (who can afford it) will “go private” in order reduce their waiting times, and then stay in the private sector thereafter.

As if to confirm already warranted suspicions about Tory motives, the government announced a plan, given the Orwellian name “Care.data”, to sell everyone’s NHS health data to commercial firms like Google, who would then be able to use it without their explicit consent.

The government said the data would be anonymized, which evoked scorn from IT professionals in the media, since according to them it is really easy to deanonymize such data and for other private entities down the data-chain to acquire and sell-on the attained deanonymized data.

One expert said there are mountains of this type of data on both the deep and darknet.

Not that the Tories show any sign of giving a rat’s posterior about this eventuality.

Four members of a Muslim family killed in London, Ontario terrorist atrocity

Roger Jordan

Four members of a Muslim family in London, Ontario were brutally slain Sunday night in a hit-and-run attack that police have described as “premeditated” and motivated by “hate” towards Islam and Muslims.

Police have revealed next to nothing about what they know about the far-right political views and connections of the 20-year-old assailant, Nathaniel Veltman. But they have characterized his murderous attack as a “hate crime” and have said they are considering adding “terrorism charges” to the four counts of murder and one of attempted murder laid against him on Monday.

The Afzaal family (Credit: @MurtazaViews/Twitter)

The victims, whom Veltman struck at high speed with his black pickup truck at 8:40 p.m. Sunday while they were out for a stroll, are 46-year-old Salman Afzaal, his unnamed 74-year-old mother, his 44-year-old wife, Madiha Salman, and their 15-year-old daughter, Yumna Afzaal. Fayez Afzaal, aged nine, survived the attack and remains in hospital with serious injuries.

Salman reportedly came from Pakistan and was a well-known member of the Muslim community in London, which is one of Canada’s oldest. Danveer Chaudry, a family friend, said Salman was involved in community work at the local mosque. “He was a very humble guy, always there for the community. I feel sorry that we were not in touch in the last year because of COVID. When I heard this tragedy, my heart is in so much pain and sorrow,” he told CBC.

The authorities have said the assailant was wearing a body armour-style vest when he was detained by police 10 minutes after the attack. But as of yesterday afternoon, almost 48 hours after his arrest, they have said nothing about his background, including whether he was employed, unemployed or a student, had ties to a far-right group, or made any statement on his arrest.

A Reuters report released Monday night noted that relatives of the deceased had released a statement saying that Veltman’s attack was supported by a group with which he was associated. However, neither their statement nor any other publicly available report has identified the group.

Although details about Veltman’s past and political views are being kept strictly under wraps, the fact that the police are even considering terrorism charges indicates that substantial evidence of his association with the far right must be in their possession.

Adopted on the pretext of the 9/11 attacks, Canada’s draconian anti-terrorism laws have been invoked multiple times against Islamist extremists, including those entrapped by state agents. But Crown prosecutors and the police-security agencies have generally declined to bring terrorism charges against fascist and other far-right assailants.

For example, Alexandre Bissonnette, who killed six Muslims in an armed assault on the Quebec City mosque in January 2017, was convicted on six charges of first-degree murder. However, he faced no terrorism charges, even though his far-right convictions, including support for Trump and the French neo-fascist Marine Le Pen and hatred of Muslims, were well established.

Canadian political leaders acknowledged the political character of Veltman’s bloody crime. “This killing was no accident,” declared Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a Tuesday House of Commons speech. “This was a terrorist attack.” He placed Veltman’s murderous rampage in the context of the Quebec City mosque shooting, the murder of a man at an Ontario mosque last September, and the harassment of black Muslim women in Edmonton, Alberta. He vowed to “dismantle far-right groups” and pointed to the government’s placing of the Proud Boys on Canada’s terrorism watch list as proof of its readiness to act.

New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh declared that the attack had its source in “pervasive racism” in Canada. “The reality is this is our Canada,” Singh said. “How many more families will be killed before we do something? Another family can’t be mauled down in the streets and nothing happens. Muslims are not safe in this country.”

Behind these crocodile tears, the representatives of the political establishment are unwilling and incapable of acknowledging that the rise of Islamophobia and far-right forces is a direct product of the foreign and domestic policies pursued and supported by all parties in parliament. Contrary to Singh’s fatuous attempt to blame the entire population for anti-Muslim hysteria and discrimination with references to “our Canada,” the reality is that these reactionary sentiments have been systematically stoked and deployed to deadly effect by the Canadian ruling class.

Taking the neocolonial invasion and occupation of Afghanistan as a starting point, Canadian imperialism has been engaged in almost perpetual war for the past 20 years. Canada’s involvement in the US-led onslaughts against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria have not only brutalized Canadian society, conveying the impression that all problems can be overcome by resorting to military force and high-powered firearms, but facilitated the eruption of virulent Islamophobia at home. This has proceeded in tandem with a savage assault on social spending and the gutting of democratic rights, including workers’ right to strike, which has ratcheted up social tensions to the breaking point, accelerated the growth of social inequality and created urban landscapes dominated by mass poverty and precarious employment.

To enforce this class war agenda against widespread social opposition, sections of the ruling elite have cultivated direct ties with far-right groups. This includes the use of fascistic thugs by company management at the Federated Cooperatives Ltd. oil refinery in Saskatchewan to intimidate locked out workers.

The Canadian ruling class’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic epitomizes the brutality of contemporary capitalist society. It has systemically prioritized profits over lives. While more than 25,000 Canadians have lost their lives to COVID-19, the country’s 48 billionaires have gained $78 billion in wealth during the 16-month-long pandemic.

Far-right forces, like Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party and the right-wing populist Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ), which currently forms Quebec’s provincial government, have undoubtedly spearheaded the demonization of the Muslim population. In 2015, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, in which Bernier served, proposed setting up a “barbaric cultural practices” snitch line targeting Muslims. In 2019, the CAQ, to wide applause from Quebec’s ruling elite, adopted legislation, Bill 21, that attacks religious minorities, and especially Muslim women, by prohibiting the wearing of “religious signs” by public sector workers, including teachers, in “positions of authority;” and by denying public services, including health care and education, to observant women who wear the burka or niqab.

If these chauvinist and far-right forces have been able to act with such aggressiveness, it is because the discriminatory measures they propose have been given credibility and even endorsed by forces on the so-called “left.” For more than a decade Québec Solidaire, a pseudo-left party that supports Quebec independence, described the reactionary debate over “excessive accommodation” to immigrants and minorities out of which Bill 21 emerged as “necessary.” And while Singh took potshots Tuesday at “politicians” who “have used Islamophobia for political gain,” the reality is that his own NDP is the linchpin propping up the Trudeau minority government. A government that has continued and expanded Canada’s participation in US aggression and war in the Middle East and intensified its collaboration, under both Trump and Biden, with the fascistic Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the United States to stop refugees fleeing poverty and American imperialist violence from seeking asylum in Canada.

Trudeau and Singh’s bluster about fighting the far right is a fraud. The Trudeau government has played a central role in ignoring and downplaying the extensive evidence of far-right activities in the Canadian Armed Forces. When a far-right military reservist sought to assassinate Trudeau last July, the incident was trivialized and the assailant faced only minor weapons charges.

These processes are not unique to Canada. Far-right terrorists, nourished by the imperialist-led wars of aggression targeting predominantly Muslim countries and the discrimination and abuse against immigrants and refugees perpetrated by the major powers, have targeted Muslims around the world. The deadliest of these far-right rampages include the brutal shooting spree by fascist terrorist Brenton Tarrant in Christchurch, New Zealand, which claimed the lives of 51 people in two mosques in March 2019, and the July 2011 massacre by Anders Behring Breivik of 77 people, most of whom were members of the Labour Party’s youth movement.

US Supreme Court blocks green cards for refugees with temporary status

Kevin Martinez

On Monday, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled in Sanchez v. Mayorkas that immigrants who are living in the US for humanitarian reasons cannot apply to become permanent residents. Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the federal law prohibits those who entered the United States illegally and now have Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from seeking green cards to stay permanently.

There are currently 400,000 people in the US who have been granted TPS because of war or disaster in their home countries. The program involves more than 12 countries and allows TPS holders to work legally and apply for permanent citizenship.

Clouds roll over the Supreme Court at dusk on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sunday, May 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

The Supreme Court argued that although refugees were granted TPS they were never formally “admitted” into the country. Kagan wrote, “The TPS program gives foreign nationals nonimmigrant status, but it does not admit them. So the conferral of TPS does not make an unlawful entrant… eligible,” for a green card.

Kagan noted that only Congress can grant citizenship and noted that the House of Representatives has passed legislation that would allow TPS holders to apply for green cards. The bill, however, faces slim chances of passing the Senate.

President Joe Biden expressed his support for changing the law but noted, like the Trump Administration, that he did not support allowing immigrants who entered the country illegally to apply for permanent resident status.

In recent years, federal courts around the country issued conflicting rules regarding TPS holders and their right to apply for citizenship. The Trump Administration had threatened to cancel the program, sending fears among immigrants that they could be deported back to countries that they had not lived in for years, despite living and working in the US, and in some cases giving birth to children who have American citizenship.

Justice Kagan ruled that “Lawful status and admission, as the court below recognized, are distinct concepts in immigration law: Establishing one does not necessarily establish the other.” She continued, “And because a grant of TPS does not come with a ticket of admission, it does not eliminate the disqualifying effect of an unlawful entry.”

The ruling closes a window for plaintiffs Jose Santos Sanchez and his wife, both residents of New Jersey and TPS holders originally from El Salvador, to apply for a green card from his employer, a yacht company that sponsored him for a job-based green card over a decade ago.

The couple came to the US illegally in 1997 and 1998 and now have four children, with the youngest born in America and therefore a citizen.

After a series of earthquakes in El Salvador in 2001, they were granted TPS, which shielded them from deportation. In 2014, the couple wanted to “adjust” their status to become lawful permanent residents and get green cards.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services denied their application, stating that they were ineligible because they entered the country illegally and were never formally admitted into the US.

Kagan argued that even though Sanchez was given TPS status, his unlawful entry into the US means that “He therefore cannot become a permanent resident of this country.”

Michael R. Huston, assistant to the US solicitor general, arguing for the Biden Administration and against the couple, noted that it had been “reasonably determined” by Congress that TPS was not “a special pathway to permanent residence for non-citizens who are already barred from that privilege because of pre-TPS conduct.” He added that TPS holders should know that the program is a temporary form of relief from deportation and “will not last forever.”

One of Santos Sanchez’s lawyers, Jaime Winthysen Aparisis, told Reuters he was “highly disappointed the Court decided against the rights of immigrants who otherwise played by the rules like Mr. and Mrs. Sanchez.” He added, “TPS recipients like them have been living and working lawfully here for twenty years.”

The case revealed that some circuit courts would grant immigrants green cards, while others would not, even in cases with identical circumstances.

The 6th, 8th, and 9th circuits of the US Court of Appeals ruled that granting a TPS status counted as a legal admission to the country, allowing immigrants to apply for a green card with a family member or employer sponsor and not have to leave the country. This allowed TPS holders with American spouses to avoid having to stay abroad and reenter the country to become permanent residents, something that is not only expensive for most, but also unsafe. The 3rd and 11th circuits ruled otherwise. Monday’s ruling put an end to the split in rulings.

China at the Edges

Alec Dubro

China is the world’s fourth largest country by landmass. It’s nearly three times bigger than India, with roughly the same population. It spans roughly four time zones (but uses only one). Its terrain encompasses desert, jungle, plains and river valley—and everything in between. It has 9,000 miles of coastline. In other words, it’s big.

But apparently not big enough.

China abuts 14 other countries—the most neighbors in the world—and has had border disputes of some kind with all of them. Two of these disputes, with Vietnam and India, have broken out into open, deadly fighting. In all, China is claiming territory or rights at sea from nine nations. In the South China Sea, armed standoffs and threats—most recently with the Philippines—are regular occurrences.

Many of the land parcels have little intrinsic value. The area in the Himalayas hotly contested with India, for instance, is basically uninhabited. There is some strategic value in that China wishes to build roads or pipelines, but given China’s massive wealth, these rights of way could be negotiated without threat. Instead, this is about sheer nationalism—China’s post-Communist secular faith. While flexing its muscle militarily and in space, China has also embarked on a determined campaign of classic irredentism: contesting lands that it claims rightfully belong to China—or once did.

Others countries in the region—most notably Japan with Russia, South Korea, and Taiwan—also have border issues. Indeed, such disputes are common throughout the world. But it’s the volume of Chinese claims, coupled with China’s massive military and financial clout, that makes these objectionable and sometimes frightening to its neighbors and to the international community. If any adjacent country had doubts about what China might do with acquired territory, ongoing events in Hong Kong made the future all too clear. Moreover, some areas, like Tibet and Xinjiang no longer have border disputes because China forcibly incorporated them into its greater polity.

These actions make a certain sense within Chinese nationalism for they are based on history. Over the millennia, China has taken many geographical and political forms, from warring fiefdoms to continental empires, all within shifting borders. Nevertheless, China has defined its rightful current borders to include any desired place that was once considered within the realm of China—no matter how fleetingly or how tenuously it was held. But even that claim is based on sand. As Evelyn Rawski wrote in her comprehensive book, Early Modern China and Northeast Asia, while the various governments spoke of a grand polity, “Chinese rhetoric belied the inability of the Chinese state to control the vast territories that it claimed.”

As a result, China is currently clawing at chunks of territory—some of which haven’t seen any form of Chinese hegemony in ages. This is currently playing itself out in several tense areas.

In India, for instance, the spring of 2020 marked an escalation of a long-standing face-off between troops of the two countries over several spots in the Himalayas, including Tibet. It reached its height that June with the beating deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and over 40 Chinese troops sustaining casualties. The following September, for the first time in 45 years, shots were exchanged. It’s a far cry from the 1960s when a full-blown war left hundreds dead and thousands injured. This time, both countries are nuclear powers and vying for influence in the region and the world. Moreover, with border conflicts still ongoing and a substantial Tibetan diaspora, India is the center of resistance to Chinese irredentism. Google “China border disputes” and a majority of the news stories and reports originate in India.

But the most visible territorial flashpoint right now is the South China Sea. In the area of the Whitsun Reef, the Philippines is demanding that China remove some 200 vessels from the area Manila claims as its own. China is stalling, claiming according to Japan’s Nikkei news service, “that the Chinese vessels were sheltering from ‘adverse weather conditions when there were none’ and the ‘nonexistence of maritime militia in the area.’”

But Manila-Beijing is just one dispute in the area; others, notably, are Vietnam, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan. As this article was being written, Malaysia scrambled a dozen aircraft to confront Chinese warplanes flying over shoals claimed by Malaysia near its territory of Sarawak on the island of Borneo. China’s aggressive militarizing of the largely uninhabited but strategically important Spratley and Paracel Islands has also drawn in the U.S. Navy ostensibly to protect the world’s shipping lanes but also as a counterweight to China’s expanding footprint.

Meanwhile, China’s clampdown on the Uighur Autonomous Region is part and parcel of its ongoing push into Central Asia. China, has claimed for instance nearly the whole of adjoining Kyrgyzstan, based on its one-time incorporation into the Qing Empire. In 1863, China was forced to cede Kyrgyzstan to the Russian Empire. It remained in the Soviet Union and achieved independence in the 1990s. Although China has for now relinquished territorial claims on adjacent Tajikistan and Kazakhstan, resentment over its lost territory is still present in Chinese nationalist circles.

China’s 2002 nationalist-inspired Northeast Asia Project raised the ire of Koreans who saw it as an attempt to block North Korean immigration into China based on China’s historical interpretation. Indeed, the Chinese behind the project cited the history of the ethnic Korean Koguryo peoples whose fifth-century territory crossed today’s boundary lines. More recently in the late 1800s, the Korean Joseon Dynasty claimed that the area of northeast China inhabited by ethnic Koreans was, in fact, Korean territory. Fortunately, this feud has so far played itself out in scholarly journals and conferences.

The fervor over these various territorial disputes—with India, Korea, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia—burns in the inflammatory tracts and pronouncements of nationalists that make their way into Chinese media—social and otherwise. That these irredentist messages are tolerated by the Chinese government indicates that Beijing to a degree approves of the message—even if it isn’t always prepared to act on it.

The most notable case lies in the Russian Far East, where jingoist Chinese claim territory north from Manchuria through Vladivostok and beyond. China did have periodic settlement in the area, but it was never extensive or deeply rooted. There they clashed with both Japan and Russia until Russia won it in the 1858 treaty of Aigun and solidified its hold after World War Two. Russia and China have indulged in armed clashes in the region as recently as 1969, and it’s hardly a secret that China covets the abundant resources of the region. But the fact that Russia is itself militarily aggressive—and nuclear armed—makes any Chinese takeover moves highly unlikely, at least for now.

But Russia has seen during its tenure in Eastern Siberia what can happen to territories on its periphery. Manchuria was once the home of a distinct peoples called the Manchu. These people spoke a language related to those of the indigenous tribes of Siberia and not related to Chinese languages. They were expansionist and conquered China in the seventeenth century, founding the Qing Dynasty. In the end, though, their home territory was saturated with Han Chinese coming from the North China Plain who eventually intermarried with the scarcer Manchu population until today there are just a handful of Manchu-speaking people left in the area. China, it seems, doesn’t so much defeat its enemies as absorb them.

With 4,000 years of history, China is able to pick and choose which history it wants to cite to justify its border belligerence. At times the Chinese hark back to the Yuan Empire s when its boundaries reached their greatest extent in the fourteenth century. Although basing territorial claims on ancient configurations is hazardous at best and fraudulent at worst, China makes its claims with a straight face.

But maybe attainment of these dubious goals isn’t the aim of the policy of irredentism. Instead, re-actualization of empire likely fulfills other, present, needs. This is the muscular attempt to wipe away the centuries when China under the Qing Dynasty was forced into humiliating treaties, invaded and eventually partially occupied by the West and Japan. The hurt is real and if not everyone in China is concerned with it, enough are to create a receptive constituency for extravagant territorial claims. That’s why, at heart this isn’t so much a foreign policy adventure as an attempt at righting history and, as it turns out, a largely successful attempt at internal cohesion.

In the end, China does not seem to want open warfare, certainly not with Japan, India, or above all the United States. It’s sufficient for those nations to occasionally back down and perhaps sign treaties that can be presented to the Chinese public as triumphs, even if the gain is slight and of little consequence. China seems to want the world to be scared of it, and maybe that’s all. The problem is these things have a way of spiraling out of hand and meaningless clashes have often turned into global calamities.

Chilean miners go out on indefinite strike

Mauricio Saavedra

Chilean mine workers are confronting a bitter fight in their two-week-old strike against Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton amidst a surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths.

Workers not only must deal with corporate giants who, buoyed by historic high copper prices, are scrambling to fully reactivate mining activity regardless of the human cost. They are also coming into conflict with the corporatist unions which during the pandemic again demonstrated their subservience and loyalty to management and the government by helping to keep the mining industry operational.

Copper has reached its highest price in a decade with the push to reopen the global economy. China is leading the demand for the metal as Washington is promising a US$2 trillion infrastructure plan. Supply shortages have also played a role as reduced output due to COVID-19 has shrunk international inventories.

S&P forecasts that total copper consumption will be more than double today’s total world production of 20 million tons. “Beyond 2020, we forecast that consumption will outstrip production over the period to 2024, resulting in a growing refined market deficit and increasing copper prices,” S&P commodity analyst Thomas Rutland said in a news release.

“We estimate that by-mid decade this growth in green demand alone will match, and then quickly surpass, the incremental demand China generated during the 2000s,” Goldman Sachs said in a report on copper released in April. “Ripple effects into non-green channels mean the 2020s are expected to be the strongest phase of volume growth in global copper demand in history.”

All the major players who privately own 71 percent of copper mines and 100 percent of lithium mines in Chile—BHP Billiton, SQM, Albemarle, Anglo-American, KGHM International, Glencore, Freeport-McMoRan, Teck, Antofagasta Minerals—are rubbing their hands at the dividends bonanza this will bring to shareholders and are gearing up to confront the working class.

The fight has already begun with BHP using strike breakers to continue production. This is permitted in Chile because pro-company labor laws allow for the replacement of contractor workers by the client company, effectively voiding the supposed “right to strike.” These laws were passed in Congress with the collusion of the parliamentary left.

The union has made a mealy-mouthed plea to challenge the provocation through Chile’s pro-employer labor court system. “The company is placing substitute workers in the mines located in northern Chile, to ensure continuous production,” BHP Specialists and Supervisors union secretary Robert Robles told Reuters. “Complaints were filed with the Labor Directorate for violation of the right to strike and anti-union practices.”

On May 27, 2021, contract workers who remotely run both the Escondida and the Spence mines’ Integral Operations Center (IOC) from 1,400 kms away in Santiago went on indefinite strike for the first time since the union was formed in 2019.

BHP’s Escondida Mine (source: BHP)

The remote workers are made up primarily of highly skilled people dismissed from BHP’s Escondida mine (which last year produced 1.19 million tons of copper, more than any other individual mine in the world) as well as the smaller BHP Spence mine. They were then immediately outsourced to a sister company “BHP CHILE” on individual contracts with lower wages and benefits when the Integral Operations Center was inaugurated two years ago.

As one IOC worker recently commented, “We remotely operate (from Santiago) the entire value chain from the extraction of the ore to its shipment. We are control room specialists who cover all the bases. In addition, we have people who work in technology, people who work in technological support, people who work in long-term and short-term planning, strategic planning, projects...”

The IOC strike was followed by a vote of 1,100 onsite workers at the Spence mine in the Antofagasta region to go on strike on May 31. A larger group of onsite workers at the Escondida mine located in the same region are scheduled to go out later in June.

A massive transformation is underway in international mining associated with the implementation of automation and remote operating systems. The process began with the relocation of business functions, operational planning and analytical functions away from sites. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated this process to include the development of remote field work with the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning technology.

A mining industry analyst from Accenture Chile explains that “pre-pandemic, field workers were 100 percent on-site. During the first quarantines this presence dropped to 60 percent and is now between 70 and 80 percent. As for office workers, pre-pandemic, on-site work represented 90 percent. During the first quarantines it dropped to 5-10 percent and is currently between 30 and 40 percent.”

With an annual production of some 5.7 million tons, Chile accounts for 28 percent of the global supply of copper. The industry as a whole is responsible for 10 percent of Chile’s GDP and 52 percent of its exports. Billions have been made in profits by the largest mining consortiums as the country has steadily lost market share. Both the state-owned company, Codelco, and many privately owned mines have been in operation for decades and require enormous capital outlays to deal with aging infrastructure, falling ore grades and higher operating costs as they dig deeper into the earth.

Map of mines in Chile (source: Consejo Minero Chile)

The drive to “modernize” labor relations and increase flexibilization, therefore, is to intensify cuts to production costs by removing all restraints to the exploitation of labor.

The latest government report indicates that the present workforce surpasses that prior to the pandemic. From 250,000 workers employed in mining pre-pandemic, 40,000 jobs were destroyed in the months following March 2020. Since June of last year, when the second wave hit the mining regions particularly hard, the trend was reversed and as of March 31 of this year 260,000 people are working in the mining industry.

What these figures don’t show is that the majority of that workforce is hired from subcontractors or on individual contracts, as are the IOC employees. The proportion of staff directly employed by the mining industry has been declining for well over four decades. In the early 2000s, only 39 percent of the workforce was directly employed, falling to only 27 percent by 2019. This trend has only accelerated since the pandemic.

Large mining corporations have couched the push for efficiencies and productivity increases through automating field work and machine operations as driven by safety concerns. This is belied by the fact that they, with the help of the right-wing government, the parliamentary lefts and the trade unions, conspired to keep the mining industry operational during the pandemic.

In the northern regions of Tarapacá, Antofagasta and Atacama, where the bulk of the mining sites are located in Chile (see map), total confirmed and suspected COVID-19 infections reached 126,300 cases, and there were 2,375 deaths by the end of last month. This carnage does not even begin to account for the thousands of incapacitations suffered by Chilean miners due to horrific accidents that in the last 20 years have claimed the lives of 581 workers.

A March 31 editorial in the Peruvian Mining Council’s Tiempo Minero gave an estimate of the number of miners who had died of COVID-19 in several Latin American countries, revealing the same disdain for workers’ lives everywhere: 120 in Ecuador; 299 in Brazil; 55 in Peru; 18 in Chile; 35 in Argentina.

Responsibility for this state of affairs rests squarely on the parliamentary left, the Communist Party, Frente Amplio and the corporatist trade unions, which for decades since the return to civilian rule have maintained tripartite arrangements, working simultaneously with business and with past center-left coalition governments, just as they have today embraced the incumbent right-wing presidency of Sebastian Piñera.

Not only did they support keeping the non-essential but highly profitable mining industry running, they passed laws facilitating the suspension of hundreds of thousands of contracts, forcing workers to eat into their unemployment insurance under the “Employment Protection Law.” They put into operation “Electronic Settlements” allowing massive layoffs without the right of workers to make any claims and agreed to postpone collective bargaining negotiations.

They signed a national unity pact with the Piñera government in the midst of massive anti-capitalist demonstrations at the end of 2019—from which emerged an agreement to hold a plebiscite and election to draft a new constitution—seeking to channel workers behind parliamentarism and dampen the class struggle. Other populist measures, such as a mining royalty bill that is unlikely to see the light of day, were pursued with the same agenda in mind.

The class struggle has reemerged among a historically significant section of Chilean workers. It is part of a developing strike wave and radicalization of the working class on a global scale whose objective significance is the fight to save lives and livelihoods from a capitalist-made crisis that the pandemic has exposed for all to see.

The working class can take forward this fight only by breaking with the nationalist and opportunist trade unions and fake left capitalist parties and developing new organs of struggle.

International Energy Agency report underscores inadequacy of US government response to climate change

Ronan Coddington

The International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based affiliate of the Organisation for Economic Co-ordination and Development (OECD), has released a special report outlining various pathways to ensure a world with a net zero carbon emissions rate by 2050.

The report, which is titled Net Zero by 2050, states that in order to achieve a carbon neutral world by that year producers will need to immediately stop any new fossil fuel production. This is only one of 400 “milestones” along the road to 2050, and its implausibility only underscores the difficulties of combining a rational, science-based response to the danger of climate change with the maintenance of global capitalism, driven by private profits and the interests of rival nation-states.

The report, issued May 17, is billed as “the world’s first comprehensive study of how to transition to a net zero energy system by 2050.” It promises to do so “while ensuring stable and affordable energy supplies, providing universal energy access, and enabling robust economic growth,” according to its press release.

International Energy Agency building (iea.org)

Countries will need to increase solar and wind production by roughly 400 percent more than the current rate. This would occur with a phasing out of coal and gas plants, in favor of solar and nuclear plants, as well as the retrofitting of coal and gas plants with carbon capture devices, where the carbon will later be injected underground. According to the special report, this transition must finalize before 2040. As it stands, roughly 80 percent of the world’s energy grids are powered by fossil fuels.

By 2040, a significant amount of air travel would have to be done with renewable fuels like hydrogen. By 2030, the majority of cars sold would need to be electric. By 2035 most vehicles involved in the transportation of goods would also need to make this transition.

The pathways described by the IEA also include enabling access to clean electricity and cooking to everyone in the world and making the world’s electric grid completely carbon neutral by 2040. “The sheer magnitude of changes needed to get to net zero emissions by 2050 is still not fully understood by many governments and investors,” stated IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol.

The agency, which functions as an advisor for numerous national governments, stated: “[c]limate pledges by governments to date—even if fully achieved—would fall well short of what is required” to achieve these goals. The report calls for “a historic surge in clean energy investment that creates millions of new jobs and lifts global economic growth.” The agency’s underlying assumption is that this can be done under capitalism.

The pathways and benchmarks provided by the IEA are based upon goals set by the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, a nonbinding pact which most leading world governments have signed onto. In addition to being unenforceable, the Paris Accord presumes that rival capitalist nation-states will put aside their differences for the sake of the environment.

A number of alternative approaches suggested by the IEA are problematic in their own right. Vast quantities of lithium are needed for the manufacturing of electric vehicles and for nearly every form of renewable energy. Without investment in proper recycling infrastructure, lithium extraction is itself an extremely damaging process to the surrounding environment.

Additionally, the vaunted target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is also worthy of criticism. Keeping temperature rises within this limit fails to take into account various climate feedback loops that could push the global temperature to increase past that point even if net carbon emissions cease.

Typifying such inadequate responses was US President Joe Biden’s climate initiative announced on international Earth Day in April. The president unveiled his plan at a climate summit at the White House that was attended by numerous world leaders. A fact sheet presented by the White House declared that it has set “ambitious goals,” which put “the United States on an irreversible path to a net-zero economy by 2050.” Biden revealed that the United States would cut carbon emissions in half by 50 percent by 2030.

The emissions the Biden administration has pledged to cut in half are based on levels from 2005, a year with especially high pollution. Since 2005, the US has achieved a 14-15 percent decrease in overall emissions. This means that Biden, who will be long gone by 2050, can take credit for decreases that happened before he was even elected.

While the IEA’s report called for an immediate stop to any new fossil fuel production within the US, the Biden administration has, within its first few days of power, issued 31 drilling permits on federal land. The Biden administration has also approved 22 offshore drilling permits to companies, such as Shell and British Petroleum.

Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) recently contested a lawsuit brought forth by environmental groups to stop a Trump-approved oil extraction operation in northern Alaska. The project, dubbed “Willow,” is expected to extract roughly 100,000 barrels of oil a day for the next 30 years.

Leaving aside the political improbability of the US actually following the path outlined in Biden’s plan, there is a more fundamental issue: If the world as a whole is to reach net-zero emissions, this cannot be a matter of each of more than 200 countries separately reaching that goal. For many of the poorest countries, that would be a recipe for mass starvation. To overcome poverty and malnutrition, their energy consumption must grow.

A global solution to the climate change crisis thus necessarily requires global economic planning, which is incompatible with both the nation-state system and the profit interests of nationally based corporations and banks.

The New York Times, the mouthpiece of the American ruling class, has sought to provide apologetics for the Biden administration. An article last month, headlined “Biden’s Fossil Fuel Moves Clash With Pledges on Climate Change,” sought to explain away the administration’s hypocritical moves, saying: “Biden is trying to avoid alienating a handful of moderate Republicans and Democrats from oil, gas and coal states who will decide the fate of his legislative agenda in Congress.”

In fact, the paralysis of the entire capitalist class in the face of the climate crisis is rooted not in this or that pragmatic maneuver but in the profit system itself. And in addition to all rational and scientific responses being contingent upon the profitability of various energy conglomerates, the ruling class is also seeking to gain ground against its various geopolitical rivals.

This is demonstrated by the White House fact sheet’s declaration that the new climate initiative will “Center the Climate Crisis in U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security Considerations.”

Biden has named former Obama Secretary of State John Kerry as his climate envoy. As the World Socialist Web Site noted in January, this appointment, as with the rest of Biden’s agenda, is “driven, first and foremost, by the geopolitical needs of American imperialism.” This related particularly to Washington’s “predatory aims for the subjugation of China and Russia, which Washington regards as its two biggest military and security rivals,” the WSWS explained.

From the recent unveiling of Biden’s massive military budget proposal, which focuses on the US’s mounting confrontation with China, as well as the administration’s efforts to blame the latter for COVID-19, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s abandonment of public health as the pandemic continues, the US capitalist class has made clear its intent to pursue profit at the cost of human life.

Election in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany reveals bankruptcy of Left Party and Social Democrats

Peter Schwarz

Sunday’s state election in Saxony-Anhalt exposed the bankruptcy of the parties calling themselves “left-wing.” The Left Party, Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Greens together received only a quarter of the votes. In a deindustrialised state characterized by high levels of emigration and unemployment and low living standards, these parties left the field open to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Reiner Haseloff,right, Minister President of Saxony-Anhalt, receives flowers from Armin Laschet, CDU Federal Chairman and Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, before the start of the CDU Federal Executive Committee meeting in Berlin, Germany, June 7,2021. The top bodies are discussing the results after the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt. (Michael Kappeler via AP, Pool)

The CDU emerged as the clear winner, with 37.1 percent of the party-list votes and 40 out of 41 direct parliamentary mandates. It gained 7.4 points and took back from the AfD all 15 direct mandates the latter had won in 2016. Voter turnout was almost the same as five years ago, just over 60 percent.

The AfD lost 3.5 points but remains the second strongest party, having won 20.8 percent of the vote. Although it is dominated by the völkisch-nationalist “Flügel” (“wing”) and repeatedly makes a name for itself with Nazi slogans, one in five voters cast their ballots for this extreme right-wing organization. Whereas five years ago, the AfD had mainly campaigned on the basis of anti-refugee propaganda, this time, it also took up issues such as pensions and health and propagated the slogans of the coronavirus deniers.

The media and pollsters tried to conjure up a better result for the AfD, predicting a neck-and-neck race between it and the CDU. On election day the Bild am Sonntag newspaper ran the headline “Germany faces an earthquake on Sunday,” claiming that the CDU was only one point ahead of the AfD.

The CDU’s clear election victory is being attributed above all to Minister-President Reiner Haseloff. He managed the feat of adopting the AfD’s policies to a large extent, and—as in the case of preventing higher broadcasting charges to be paid by most citizens—openly cooperating with them, while at the same time giving assurances that there would never be a government coalition with the AfD.

Many voters apparently voted for the CDU to prevent the AfD, which according to polls is rejected by an overwhelming majority, from joining the government. The Left Party lost 10 percent and the SPD lost 18 percent of its voters to the CDU.

These two parties bear primary responsibility for the rise of the far right. Through their decades-long support for social cuts and deindustrialisation at the federal and state levels, they have driven desperate elements into the arms of the far-right demagogues.

In the 1990s, the SPD was the strongest party in Saxony-Anhalt. In 1998 it achieved its best election result, winning 35.9 percent of the vote. From 1994 to 2002, Prime Minister Reinhard Höppner led an SPD minority government supported by the Left Party’s predecessor, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). Under this so-called “Magdeburg Model,” the PDS participated in a state government for the first time.

The result was a social disaster. After eight years of the Magdeburg Model, the state had the highest unemployment rate in the country, 21.4 percent. Hardly anything remained of one of Germany’s largest industrial areas. Large chemical plants in Bitterfeld, Halle and Leuna, mechanical engineering facilities in Magdeburg and copper mines in Mansfelder Land were shuttered. Youth and leisure facilities, sports facilities and educational institutions were also closed down en masse and budgets for day cares, kindergartens and afterschool care were cut by a third. Several thousand educator positions were eliminated.

In 2002, the SPD was voted out of office. It lost almost two-thirds of its vote and, with a drastic decline in voter turnout, only got 20 percent of the ballots. Now, with just 8.4 percent of the vote, it has achieved the worst result in its history.

The PDS/Left Party managed to hold on for a few more years. In 2006, it even became the second strongest party in Saxony-Anhalt with 24.1 percent of the vote. But it has also been discredited by its anti-working class policies in numerous municipalities and state governments. Winning just 11 percent of the vote, it has now had its worst election result since the federal state was founded following German reunification in 1990.

The Greens were also unable to meet the expectations placed on them before the election. Although they increased their share of the vote by 0.8 percent, with just 5.9 percent of the total they remained far behind forecasts.

The Left Party, SPD and Greens did best in affluent urban areas where there was above average turnout, while they found little support in poorer and rural areas.

The result in Halle, next to Magdeburg, the largest city in the state with 240,000 inhabitants each, is typical. In constituency III, home to some of the most expensive residential areas, turnout was 72.6 percent. The Greens achieved 23.6, the Left Party 14.3, the SPD 9.3 and the AfD 9.1 percent of the vote. In constituency I, where conditions are poorer, only 52.4 percent went to the polls. The AfD won 22.3, the Left Party 12.7, the SPD 8.1 and the Greens 6.2 percent.

The high share of votes for “other” parties, which had no chance of clearing the 5 percent hurdle needed to enter the state legislature, demonstrates that people are searching for alternatives. Collectively these organizations scored a total of 10.4 percent of the vote, 3.7 percent more than five years ago. Among first-time voters aged 18 to 24, as many as 21 percent voted for them.

These parties reflect the general confusion. Among them there are three animal rights parties, which together won 2.5 percent, Free Voters (3.1), Pirate Party (0.4), the satirical group Die Partei (0.7) and right-wing extremists. While the German National Party (NPD) vote fell from 1.9 to 0.3 percent, the coronavirus denier party DieBasis (theBase) gained 1.5 percent.

The Saxony-Anhalt election is regarded as a dress rehearsal for the federal election on September 26 and the state elections in Berlin, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and Thuringia happening at the same time. It reveals how urgent it is to build a political alternative that unites the working class across all borders based on a socialist programme.

Austria’s Black-Green government agitates against Muslims

Markus Salzmann

At the end of last month the Austrian government headed by the right-wing Chancellor Sebastian Kurz launched a deliberate provocation against Muslims in Austria by introducing its so-called “Islam Map.” The Kurz government, a coalition of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the Greens, are trying to distract attention from their disastrous policies and mobilise far-right forces.

For an entire week at the end of May, an overview of 623 Muslim institutions in Austria could be viewed on the internet. The presentation of the “map” had previously been announced at a government press conference. The website presentation contained addresses, personal data of leading figures as well as information about the activities of Muslim institutions and associations. The presentation also included an explicit request to report observations about the listed associations to the authorities.

Integration Minister Susanne Raab (Image: BKA / CC BY-SA 2.0)

All of the organisations were listed under the label “political Islam,” regardless of whether the organisation in question had political connections and objectives or not. The publication of details of hundreds of associations, mosques and their leaders was intended to mobilise the far-right dregs of society to hound and attack Muslims.

The intended reaction was not long in coming. Immediately after the publication, right-wing extremists in Vienna sprayed graffiti on several mosques and hung up posters with the inscription “Look out! Political Islam near you.” Similar signs were also put up in St. Pölten. While this represented a clear danger for Muslims, it was the intellectual architects of the attacks, namely the authors of the map and Austrian Integration Minister Susanne Raab (ÖVP), who immediately received police protection.

There was a huge wave of criticism of the government’s right-wing campaign, and even the Council of Europe demanded the withdrawal of the map. “The map overshoots the mark and is potentially counterproductive,” the Council declared in a statement by Daniel Höltgen, the special representative for anti-Muslim intolerance and hate crimes.

Many Muslims felt stigmatised and their security threatened by the publication of their addresses and other details and the Muslim Youth of Austria (MJÖ) announced it would file a complaint against the map. Due to the “massive security risk” now facing Muslims, the association demanded the deletion of the map and intends to file a complaint with the data protection authority.

Other Muslim associations, plus representatives of churches and other organisations, also spoke out strongly against the map. The Islamic Religious Community in Austria (IGGÖ) denounced the map as a risk to the security of Muslim institutions.

The University of Vienna has distanced itself from the provocation, although several academics from the university had helped to draw up the map. The strong reactions were certainly the reason why the map was taken off the internet at the end of a week. Officially, it was claimed that alleged threats against employees of the IT provider had made it necessary to take down most of the content, although the map itself, featuring a host of Muslim sites, is still available on the internet.

At the same time, both the map’s authors and the government are sticking to the campaign. “This is not discriminating in general against Muslims,” Raab told the German newspaper Die Welt. “It is about the common fight against political Islam as a breeding ground for extremism.” For her part, Green Party integration spokesperson Faika El-Nagashi announced a “lull” and a review before the site goes back online.

The comments by both politicians make clear that they continue to fully back the content of the campaign. On Thursday, Ednan Aslan, a religious scholar at the University of Vienna, who had drawn up the map on behalf of the government-affiliated Documentation Centre for Political Islam, declared that one would not allow “Islamist threats” to disrupt the “scientific work.”

The Documentation Centre for Political Islam was set up in 2020 by the ÖVP and the Greens. It was supposedly modelled on the Documentation Archive of the Austrian Resistance—in what is in fact a brazen insult to the victims of the Nazis. In fact, the roots of the Documentation Centre can be traced to an initiative of the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) in 2016. After the collapse of the previous ÖVP/FPÖ government, the Greens took over the role of the FPÖ and, together with Kurz, continued the former coalition’s extreme right-wing policies.

Not surprisingly the anti-Islamic campaign has received glowing praise from far right-wing and openly fascist circles. Beatrix von Storch, deputy federal spokesperson for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), regarded the initiative of the ÖVP-Green government in Vienna as a role model for Germany.

“The German Interior Minister Seehofer should take action against Islamic extremism in our country with the same verve shown by the Kurz government in taking action against Islamism in Austria,” the far-right politician demanded. The CDU interior politician, Hans-Jürgen Irmer, who is known for his xenophobic utterances, also demanded such a map for Germany.

This latest provocation underlines the right-wing character of the government in Vienna. During the course of his coalition with the FPÖ, Kurz had already closed down several mosques and expelled dozens of imams. Lacking any legal basis, most of the mosques were reopened following court rulings. The headscarf ban in Austrian schools, introduced in 2019, was also overturned by the Constitutional Court one year later. Again, this fundamental attack on religious freedom and freedom of expression was aimed, like the publication of the map, at whipping up anti-Islamic and xenophobic sentiments.

From the start of its participation in the Austrian government, the Green Party, which likes to portray itself as a cosmopolitan and liberal party, agreed with these xenophobic policies and have gone even further.

One of the first announcements of the ÖVP-Green government was an action plan against religiously-motivated political extremism. Criminal law was to be adapted to “current challenges.” These “challenges” did not refer to the growing incidents of far-right terror, but rather the “specification and addition of criminal offences to effectively combat religiously motivated political extremism (political Islam).”

The Islam Act passed in 2015 was strengthened by the ÖVP and the Greens this year. The Act laid down regulations on the financing of Islamic organisations and institutions and associated penalties for non compliance. The aim is to facilitate the closure of mosques and the expulsion of imams. The Greens also agreed to include a ban on headscarves in the coalition agreement.

Last week, the Austrian parliament’s interior committee confirmed the first part of new anti-terror legislation adopted by the government. A broad majority from all parties represented in the ruling National Council voted for a tightening up of the country’s citizenship law. According to this law, persons convicted under one of the terror paragraphs of the penal code can in future have their citizenship revoked, provided they have another citizenship. The law is clearly directed against immigrants, mainly from Muslim countries.

With this right-wing course, the government in Vienna is also reacting to current scandals. The Public Prosecutor’s Office for Economic Affairs and Corruption in Vienna accuses Kurz of giving false testimony to the official committee investigating the Ibiza affair. According to a recent opinion poll published by the news magazine Profil, 47 percent are now in favour of Kurz’s resignation.

Above all, however, the undemocratic policies of Kurz and the Greens are directed against the entire population. The COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s unscrupulous policies have massively aggravated the social situation in the country. The government’s policy of opening up the economy despite the continued spread of the coronavirus has cost the lives of more than 10,600 people. Unemployment also rose to record levels in 2020.

At the same time, the government’s plans to slash benefits for the unemployed in order to force them back to work in a blatant attack on basic democratic rights. The ÖVP and the Chamber of Commerce are currently planning a legislative initiative that will require the long-term unemployed to take work anywhere in the country in future. In the process, unemployment benefits are to be reduced from 55 to 40 percent of former wage levels.