The Battle for the Soul of India

Saad Hafiz

We are witnessing a battle for the rational soul of India. It has long been the conventional wisdom that the country’s historic and admirable diversity and tolerance would prevent the creation of a Hindu-first nation. But it seems increasingly likely that the narrative of India as a Hindu democratic state will prevail.

There is a danger that India’s secular political culture and pluralistic state for all citizens, regardless of religion, may cease to exist. The world, fixated on India’s ascent as a confident and thriving global economic and military power, has been slow to appreciate a seismic shift in its politics. The country has rapidly moved away from the values of non-violence and secularism espoused by eminent leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru.

Although seen from another perspective, India is coming of age. At some stage, all nations have to move forward and leave the past behind. India’s attraction to majoritarian nationalism and national greatness is also consistent with global political trends. And Prime Minister Modi’s broad popularity attests to the fact that India expects decisive leadership and that the end justifies the means.

However, even as India slowly dispenses with secularism, Indians should know that sustaining a progressive country by a slogan of religion is fraught with hazards. Pakistanis have found this out at enormous cost. Nationalism is a political strategy, one of the many that politicians have in their kitty to win popularity and elections.

Feeling slighted since Independence – the Hindu majority – rebelling against minority appeasing corrupt elites, and cutting across caste and class lines has jumped on the nationalist bandwagon. Taking advantage of these beneficial conditions, Modi has built a formidable following. As a charismatic populist, he has promised the Hindu masses salvation from poverty and misrule. Modi’s detractors say that his success will be short-lived as it works on exploiting divisions in society.

While we can’t take issue with Modi’s quest to make India great, we hope that he can avoid incendiary politics to achieve his goal. After two successful elections, for a consummate politician like Modi, his vilification of the opposition Congress party’s corruption and Pakistan-inspired terrorism, are winning themes. But he should be mindful that inciting his Hindu nationalist base doesn’t trigger deadly violence against Muslims and other vulnerable minorities.

There are telling signs that the dark lurking forces of hyper-nationalism and communalism are determined to crush pluralism and tolerance. It is part of the alarming Hindu-only agenda feared by minorities. In a sign of the changing times, the Hindu extremist Nathuram Godse who assassinated Gandhi in 1948 for selling out to Muslims is a revered figure in rabid Hindutva “Hindu nationalist” circles today.

More recently, 800,000 soldiers holding 9 million, mostly Muslim civilians in Indian Kashmir in siege conditions, for over two months, is a blot on Indian democracy. This flagrant denial of human rights can’t be whitewashed or forgotten. It seems too glib and disingenuous for Indian officials to describe the change in the status of Kashmir, as mainstreaming the disputed territory into India’s thriving and vibrant democracy.

We shouldn’t view the projection of power and self-belief, by the modern Indian state, based on significant achievements entirely negatively. For example, India’s growing scientific prowess confirmed by a near landing on the moon is a matter of pride for all South Asians. But India ought to be especially careful that it doesn’t crush criticism, dissent, and debate on its path to progress, which we have seen happen elsewhere.

But all is not lost as secular Indians keep reminding us. They place their faith in India’s inclusive constitution, considered one of the best that has been written and enacted. We hope that any attempt to subvert it will fail as that would be a disaster for Indian democracy.

The other promising factor is that Hinduism doesn’t naturally lend itself to authoritarianism. Unlike Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Hinduism isn’t bound by strictures. A Hindu can be deeply or mildly religious an agnostic or an atheist – and yet can call himself a Hindu.

Moreover, India does pass the diversity test. Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs don’t view themselves Hindus, neither do a substantial number of Dalits; some South Indians consider parts of Hinduism as an imposition of Aryan North on Dravidian South.

Ultimately, it is for Indians to decide if they want to sacrifice their rich culture and democratic values on the altar of nationalism. A firm rejection of a Hindu state or temperance of its excesses will send a clear message, beyond India’s borders, particularly neighboring China and Pakistan, that the land of Emperor Asoka and Emperor Akbar has room for all Indians, not just Hindus. We hope they make the right moral choice.

Iraq Protests: Death Toll Soars as Militias Target Protesters

Patrick Cockburn

Iraqi paramilitary groups close to Iran are suspected of joining attacks on protesters in Baghdad and other cities, leading to heavy loss of life among demonstrators. Some 107 people have been killed and over 6,000 wounded in the last six days, though hospital doctors say the government is understating the true number of fatalities.

“The pro-Iranian militia have each taken a sector of Baghdad and are responsible for its security,” a source, who does not want his name published, told The Independent.

He said that snipers belonging to these groups had fired live rounds at protesters, often aiming for the head or heart. Eyewitnesses say that Iraqi soldiers are also firing directly into crowds of the protesters, who are demanding the fall of the government, jobs and an end to corruption.

The gunmen shooting protesters come from pro-Iranian factions of the Hashd al-Shaabi or Popular Mobilization Units, an 85,000-strong strong body that came into being to stop the Isis advance on Baghdad after the fall of Mosul in 2014. It is a coalition of about 30 groups, many of them predating Isis, which is paid for by the Iraqi government and nominally under its control, but with widely varying political loyalties. They includes powerful units, such as Ketaeb Hezbollah, which say opening that their first loyalty is to the Iranian leadership.

The demonstrations in Baghdad and in much of Shia southern Iraq are largely spontaneous, but where there are local leaders they have sometimes been singled out for killing.

Haider Karim Al-Saidi, a leading organiser of the protests, was shot dead by a sniper near Al-Mudhafar Square late on Sunday night. Earlier, witnesses had reported that they had seen snipers taking up positions on roof tops overlooking the square.

The paramilitaries have assaulted injured protesters in hospital: a doctor working in the Medical City complex in central Baghdad said that members of a paramilitary group called Asaib Ahl al-Haq, known for its pro-Iranian sympathies, had broken into a hospital ward filled with wounded demonstrators and started hitting them. When he protested, he was told “to mind his own business” and was beaten with a baton.

An Interior Ministry spokesman Saad Maan said that 6,107 people had been injured in the unrest, including 1,200 members of the security forces. Public buildings and political party headquarters have also been destroyed.

A paramilitary group called Kataib Hezbollah, which has no connection with the Lebanese group with a similar name but is strongly supportive of Iran, is alleged to have ransacked at least ten television stations that had been giving full or sympathetic coverage to the demonstrations. In one case gunmen in balaclavas arrived in twelve white cars without license plates and wrecked studios, seizing computers, beating up staff and taking their wallets and mobile phones.

The government has expressed suspicion that a third party is playing a role in provoking greater violence, through using snipers who shoot to kill. Interior Ministry spokesman Saad Maan said at a press conference that “malicious hands” were targeting protesters and security forces alike. This may be true in part but is also a bid by the security forces to evade responsibility for firing directly into crowds, though there is every sign that they have been doing just that. Repressive measures have included a two-day curfew, a continuing ban on the internet, and pre-emptive arrests.

The demands of the protesters have become more radical since last Tuesday, as the casualty toll has mounted, with growing calls for the fall of the government of Adel Abdul Mahdi. He has shown himself to be ineffective, making a speech at the weekend in which he outlined a 17-point plan including unemployment benefit and subsidised housing but he made little impression. In his year in office, Mr Mahdi has failed to introduce any important reforms, so his sudden zeal for change carries little credibility.

The signs are, for the moment that repression will continue but also that it will not succeed.

“The protesters are very young and feel they have little to lose,” says one observer. “They will go on protesting whatever happens.”

Despite Iraq enjoying monthly oil revenues of over $6 billion, pervasive government corruption since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 has meant that there has been little new building of roads, schools and hospitals and there is a chronic shortage of electricity and, in some cities, water.

Above all there is a lack of jobs with a population pf 38 million, growing by one million year and 70 per cent below the age of 30. Many of these are jobless and include 307,000 graduates. Some of the have been camped outside ministries in Baghdad for the last three months asking for jobs appropriate to their qualifications, but not getting them.

Popular anger over long-standing socioeconomic grievances has been increasing year by year and the defeat of Isis in the siege of Mosul in 2017 means that the government no longer has the excuse that all its energies and resources are absorbed by the war against al-Qaeda type groups.

But this does not quite explain why the Iraqi government – along with pro-Iranian paramilitary groups – should have reacted so violently and counter-productively against a relatively small protest march on the Jumhuriya Bridge in Baghdad last Tuesday.

There have been much bigger protests without provoking such violence in previous years, including one last year in Basra that was close to a general uprising, but without live rounds being fired at demonstrators. In 2016, demonstrators stormed the Green Zone in Baghdad and ransacked the parliament building and the prime minister’s office while the security forces stood by.

Explanations for the self-destructive reaction of the government this time round include Prime Minister Adel Andul Mahdi’s advisers being dominated by military hawks prone to rely on force and with little political understanding. The aggressive role of the pro-Iranian paramilitaries is evidence that Tehran fears peaceful anti-government mass protests, along the lines of the Green Movement in Iran in 2009 and in Syria in 2011, both of which, at their peak, threatened regime change.

“The Iranians want to militarise the situation so it cease to be a mass movement,” says one Iraqi commentator. This would explain the shooting of so many demonstrators. But by over reacting the government and the Iranians may have provoked the very situation that they want to avoid.

Is Literature Dying ?

Rajesh Subramanian

With ever increasing onslaught from the internet, electronic media and urban lifestyles, many critics have started voicing their worries about whether Literature, in its written form, is becoming more and more obsolete and  dying. Death pronouncements about Literature have been made several times and they continue to be made whenever writers start forecasting and start expressing anxiety about their irrelevance in the modern times.

A strong pronouncement about the bed-ridden state of literature came from Alvin Kernan (Professor of Humanities at Princeton University) who declared (sic) “ Literature is dead; it is but a piece of useless logwood “. Kernan identified the killer of literature as post-modernism, which symbolizes the extensive revolutions in society and the literary world. In his book The Death of Literature  Kernan talks about the literature’s imminent death, but does not talk about the death of the printed word or the extinction of imaginative writing. He in fact mentioned in an interview, “I don’t see how Shakespeare and Homer and Joyce can die. They’ll be read by sensible people. There may even be some in the university who’ll want to do it.” He meant the essence of “literature” had moved from the “creativity of authors” to a different state of existence, driven by new waves of literary theories like post-modernism and deconstructionism.

Due to post modernism, realism gave way to deconstructionism. The novel was no more considered a pleasurable experience to the reader; deconstructionism considers the reader and the author to be parts of the novel and the reader is expected to fight tooth and nail with the novel to comprehend it.

That really proved to be an intellectually stimulating exercise to the reader; the process also led to multiple interpretations of the same work of literature. Especially in poetry, this led to subjective interpretation dependent purely upon the scope of intellectual and creative landscape of the reader’s mind. Some people even saw this as an expansion of the dimension of joy of reading and a wonderful effect of modern literature.

Post modernism splits the work of writing into several individually examinable pieces, one of which is the writer/author. Post modernism evolved along with the so called “ counter-culture” and “hippism” of the  1960s. It was during that period that the electronic media ( including colour television that hit the society at that time ) started dominating entertainment scenario and the people lost their interest in “realistic” novels and literature and started opting for the “coca-cola” culture. Serious literature began to be studied only in the Universities and the common man had neither the time nor inclination to read Pushkin, Dostoyevsky or Pearl S Buck. The publication of realist novels has been declining throughout the world since then.

The pop culture introduced first in the world of music made its entry into the world of creative art, with Andy Warrhol. Warrhol revolutionized the concept of creative art and the world of creativity was no more the same. Literature was no exception to this invasion of pop culture. But the eighties and nineties witnessed the emergence of several acclaimed literary works spun along new creative concepts like magic realism, biographical novels, ethnic novels etc. Literature seems to be capable of holding itself against all threats of extinction and perhaps would never kick the bucket.

Pure economic logic tells us that there is so much supply of literature in newer and newer forms, there must also be adequate demand for it. But why do people still choose literature as a pastime activity, when the modern world offers so many more tantalizing entertainment options? It is perhaps because of the luxuries which a written literary work offers to its readers – a novel or book is easily portable, costs less, can be used as and when time permits, does not need any special gadgets, can be stored for long periods of time and is not jarring on the senses.

The increased patronage extended by the general public, especially the youth, to the book fairs and increased usage of libraries including mobile and lending libraries lends credence to the belief that the written book has not lost its charm inspite of growth in electronic media and the internet.

The fact that the advent of electronic teachers has not led to the extinction of text books in Western countries stands to support the contention that a book is  more man friendly than any other medium. Though it may be argued by some that the motion pictures are more lively than the written scripts, the spectator is unlikely to absorb all the nuances and aesthetics that may be portrayed in motion pictures. But a written work has to necessarily portray all such nuances in words and the reader inescapably experiences them. In this aspect, there seems to be no medium that can beat the written work of literature. One cannot but agree with the statement, “Obituary to literature is an impossibility”.

Edna O’Brien, in one of her articles, wonders:

“I come out of my reading corner, back to the daily chores and demands, to the schisms and terrors of the world and I look around at my shelves, heaving with books, and wonder if the next occupant will tear them down and the porter’s chair will be assigned to a rubbish dump. I think of George Steiner’s great essay, “The Retreat from the Word”, written in 1961, depicting those islands of privacy and silence, which the reading of a book entails. With a searing eye, he envisaged an altered world, a society in search of easier, bolder distractions and of pleasures less perplexing to the brain. Then I have to ask myself if, in 20 or 30 years, literature will be an essential branch of life. Will it seep into the fabric of social and political thought, will it have its faithful zealots, or will there be a falling away, which Steiner foresaw. In short, is it a dying animal?”

I prefer replying in the negative.

How Most Americans Favor Corruption

Eric Zuesse

Americans don’t do it voluntarily, but mainly because they don’t understand the way the U.S. system works. Part of that is the nation’s legal system; part of it isn’t, but is instead international.

Regardless of whether or not today’s United States is a democracy, our legal system possesses two features that make corruption especially difficult to prosecute to conviction, and this difficulty is extreme and makes such convictions extremely rare at the top, amongst members of Congress, and Presidents, and former federal officials, and billionaires, so that people at that level need to be extremely stupid in order to be convictable for whatever corruption they might do. (And such extreme stupidity is virtually non-existent amongst that elite, most powerful, group. So, they get away with it. There is absolutely nothing to stop them.) Consequently, corruption is rampant at the top in America.

Both of these two domestic, U.S., features apply also to some lesser extent in every other country; and, at the end, I’ll describe the exacerbating factor that makes the situation especially bad in the United States — the international factor, which intensifies America’s corruption-problem.

Reason Number One why Americans favor corruption is that (especially at the top) corruption is, to a large extent — and very unlike lower-class crimes of direct violence — a judgment-call, largely political, and therefore specifically a partisan matter to judge. Anything that’s “partisan” is especially difficult to produce a unanimous verdict, which is what would be required for a conviction. Consequently, an individual of high status within the elite will be granted by his group or “party” every benefit of every possible doubt. This is likely to protect any elite person from being convicted.

Take, for example, the latest “CBS News poll: Majority of Americans and Democrats approve of Trump impeachment inquiry”. On the question of impeachment, 87% of Democrats approve, while 77% of Republicans disapprove. There’s nothing even approaching unanimity. However, since impeachment is not entirely an issue which is based solely on the possibility of there having been corruption, a better indicator here is the poll’s other main question, of whether Trump deserves to be impeached over Ukraine. That question concerns not only the possibility that Trump might have acted corruptly in this matter, but also the questions of whether Hunter Biden did, and of whether his father Joe Biden did. Consequently, it measures only on corruption (abuse-of-office), not at all on other impeachment-issues; so, this is an ideal measure, for our purpose. Of course, Trump is a Republican but the latter two are Democrats, and Joe aims to replace Trump if Trump doesn’t become impeached by the House and then convicted in the Senate, and Joe aims to replace Mike Pence if Trump does become convicted in the Senate and replaced there by his Vice President. Though corruption is the issue on both sides (Republicans versus Democrats), it is an extremely partisan issue and therefore plays extremely to each side’s political prejudices. 75% of Democrats believe that Trump deserves to be impeached over the issue of Ukraine, and 8% believe that he doesn’t. 70% of Republicans think that he doesn’t deserve to be impeached over Ukraine, and 16% believe that he does. Consequently, the single issue of Ukraine accounts for almost all of the beliefs on both sides regarding whether or not Trump deserves to be impeached, and this issue of Ukraine is virtually 100% an issue about corruption.

In a court of law, whenever a particular issue is politically charged, unanimous verdicts are virtually impossible to attain. Neither impeachment nor removal from office requires anything even close to any such unanimity as judgment in a court-case does, because neither the House nor the Senate would be voting anything like jurors do in a courtroom, and the rules are extremely different; and, so, any corruption trial that’s in a court of law  faces an almost impossible barrier against conviction (because the standards of evidence and the other rules in a court-case are far stricter). So, this is one way in which most Americans favor corruption. (Like everywhere, Americans are prejudiced — i.e., partisan.)

Reason Number Two for this almost invulnerability at the top in America is that America’s elite, even more than in other countries, normally possess the financial wherewithal to hire enough lawyers of enough excellence in order to crush the prosecution’s case. Furthermore, there are a multitude of fine points in our laws that were written precisely in order to enable almost any of these people to be able to avoid being convicted. That’s one of the main things they buy politicians for — to get those types of “fine points” into the laws. It’s how the American system functions.

So: not only are the laws full of ‘loopholes’ that were placed there especially in order to get such people off any hook, but, on top of that, these are the people who can and do hire the ‘best lawyers that money can buy’ — and all of the lawyers and investigators that they need — in order to get off scot-free or else with only slap-on-the-wrist fines and ‘community service’ in order to avoid legal perdition, no matter how corrupt they might actually be.

As regards the non-legal reasons why corrupt individuals in our system almost never go to prison, just consider what those ‘loopholes in the law’ really are: they are expressions of cultural values. Each loophole is argued for on the basis of some cultural values. Whereas those particular values obviously disadvantage the homeless and minorities and uneducated and inarticulate and ugly and poor (since few — if any — of those people hire lobbyists), the flip side of them provides advantages to the successful and the educated and the beautiful and the articulate — the very types of people who are the likeliest to be  corrupt. You don’t find many of the elite people in prison, but you do find them in executive suites and Ivy League campuses and on Capitol Hill and in finance and in think tanks and in lobbying firms — the places where power is wielded for the people who have the most money (who hire these people as their agents).

Whereas individuals who are homeless or minorities or etc. might elicit more sympathy than the rich and powerful do, they really don’t have the laws on their side nearly as much as the elite do, and the elite are also vastly likelier to have the most competent legal representation — and the legislators and judges — on their side. But if ever a non-elite person is corrupt, that person is extremely likely to “have the book thrown at him” and to get no sympathy at all from the public. This exemplifies the core principle of conservatism: all praise goes upward, all blame goes downward.

—

And, so, anyone who supports this system is actually favoring corruption. They do it not voluntarily, but instead because there are things they believe and don’t even question — such as that the elite are superior — but that are actually false. So: corrupt people almost always get away with it.

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The reason, why the above-stated reasons apply increasingly and especially in the United States, has been that after Russia ended its side of the Cold War in 1991, America’s elite — the most corrupt part of society — increasingly and especially acquired global immunity for its violations of international laws, such as by increasingly invading countries that had never invaded nor even threatened to invade the United States. The 2003 invasion of Iraq made especially clear, to the entire world, that America would even go so far as to order U.N. weapons-inspectors out of a country in order to bomb it. That brazen and effective termination of the applicability to the U.S. (and to any of its allies, America’s vassals), of any international laws, constituted the making-public that the United Nations has been diminished to being little more than flapping mouths, at least since 20 March 2003.

Consequently, with no international body to restrain the American elite, the lid is now entirely off to corruption in America; and, the lower that the global public esteem the U.N., the worse that America’s corruption will become (if it’s not already entirely free of restraints). The restraints of international law (such as whatever restraints had previously existed) are now perhaps totally gone. Consider, for example, what happened to Gaddafi, and to Libya, in 2011.

A big change in global public opinion toward the U.N. occurred as a direct result of the U.S.-and-allied 20 March 2003 invasion of Iraq. The only periodic polling that was done internationally on the public’s esteem for the U.N., and that covered the period both shortly before and shortly after America’s invasion and destruction of Iraq, was by Pew. It sub-headlined “U.N. Less Popular”, and reported that in the 15 countries where public opinion was sampled both in 2002 (before the invasion) and in 2003 (after it), the favorability rating of the U.N. declined in 14 of the 15 nations, and the decline was sharp in each one of them (declining typically by a third, during just that one year). Only in Pakistan did the public rate the U.N. more favorably in 2003 than in 2002. Only in Pakistan did the public approve the U.N.’s becoming effectively nullified, and the U.S. Government and its allies thereby taking over the world as not only the lawmaker, but the judge, jury, police, and executioner, for all nations — the government of the world (a dictatorial government outside the United States, since the U.S. Government cannot even claim to democratically represent any of those foreigners). And yet, only 13% of respondents in Pakistan approved of the United States in 2003, which was exactly half of the 26% there who approved of the U.N.

The solution, when there is no legal government that stands above the nations of the world, isn’t so much to make the most powerful nation (the U.S.) less effective, as it is to make the U.N. more effective. The problem here isn’t actually the U.N.’s failure, so much as it is the U.S. regime’s freedom to violate international laws — especially the U.N. Charter. There is — clearly, now — no legal government of the world’s nations. The U.N. is less of a world-government now, after 20 March 2003, than it ever was before. So, international bullies such as the U.S. Government reign with impunity. Look, for example, at what such bullies are currently doing to Iran and to Venezuela — and, to Julian Assange. Ever since 2003, the international law-breaking has become blatant, and unashamed — sometimes even bordering on boastful.

The longer that this international immunity of the U.S. and its allies continues, the more corrupt America will become. FDR’s intentions for the U.N. were correct; Truman’s have by now failed utterly; as a consequence of which, the United States is effectively lawless at its top. A country like this, where the courts effectively trash its own Constitution, and the nation’s executive sometimes even flaunts his flouting of the little that still exists of a Constitution for the world, stands in sharp need of an international force that can effectively say no to its government. FDR was correct about international law, and not only about the U.S. Constitution.

One of the reasons why the U.N. has failed is that it has never clearly defined even the most dangerous international crime, “international aggression” (the invasion by one country against another country that had never invaded nor seriously threatened it), much less established penalties for it. The Nuremberg Tribunals after WW II were supposed to start the process, but the effort just faded soon thereafter (under Truman). Furthermore, existing international law is totally irrelevant to non-state aggressors, such as Al Qaeda, which should be allowed no protection by any government. Nor does international law address under what conditions a nation whose government protects terror-groups (such as Afghanistan, prior to 9/11) may legitimately be invaded (such as by the U.S. after 9/11), nor what limitations ought to be placed upon such a retaliatory invasion. “Terrorism” itself is undefined. In other words: the U.N., to date, is almost a total failure. When the U.S. Government steps into this legal void so as to impose its will in flagrant disregard of what international law does exist, this reflects not only the failure of the United States, but the failure of all of human civilization, at the present stage. That’s where we now are. Almost every international institution that the U.S. set up after WW II needs to be replaced. We’ve been on the wrong path, since FDR died. And America has been leading the world on that wrong path. It’s therefore no surprise that Americans approve of this path — Obama’s “the one indispensable nation”, or Trump’s “America first, last, and always” — more than the world’s other nations do. (Of course, Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini, also held that view, which isn’t patriotism, but instead nationalism — specifically, supremacist nationalism.) This has nothing to do particularly with Trump. Obama was perhaps even worse. It has to do, instead, with what America has been, ever since FDR died.

As US vaping-related lung illnesses soar, FDA found negligent in enforcing e-cig regulations

Benjamin Mateus

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as of October 1 there have been 1,080 cases of lung injury arising from e-cigarette (e-cig) use, up from the 450 cases confirmed in early September. Casualties have been documented in 48 states and 1 US territory, the US Virgin Islands. Eighteen deaths have been confirmed in 15 states. According to an October 3 New York Times report, additional deaths have been cited in a total of 16 states. This is an increase from five reported deaths a month ago.

The recent explosion of cases over the last two to three weeks includes a combination of 275 new cases as well as prior unrecognized cases of unusual pneumonia-like illnesses that have now been reclassified lung injuries caused by vaping. The CDC has reported more than 3.6 million adolescents in the US have used e-cigs.

1,080 cases of lung injury arising from e-cig use as of October 1 [Credit: vaping360.com/e-cigarettes/]

A report issued by the NIH’s drug abuse section highlights the dramatic rise in vaping among teenagers; 37.3 percent of 12th graders reported they had vaped in the past 12 months. The prevalence of vaping among teenagers in 2011 was near zero. By 2017 it had become the most common use of any tobacco-like product in this age group. The number of adolescents vaping in 2019 is double that in 2017.

In the cohort of people with lung injuries, each affected individual has reported having vaped within the month of falling ill and most note using products containing THC, the principal psychoactive constituent of cannabis. The CDC and medical officials believe THC has played a role in the outbreak.

The exact chemical compound causing these illnesses remains elusive at present. The CDC remarks, “No single product or substance has been linked to all the lung injuries.” Seventy percent of those affected are male, and 80 percent are under the age of 35. One-third of them are under the age of 21 and 16 percent under the age of 18, the cut-off ages for the legal sale of e-cigs depending on the state.

In a recent publication in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) this month, the Mayo Clinic reported their findings on lung tissue biopsies from 17 subjects, 11 of which met CDC criteria for a confirmed diagnosis of vaping-related lung injury. According to their findings, the injuries resemble those that occur with inhalation of noxious chemical fumes, suggesting a similar mechanism of injury.

The CDC noted several THC-related products that were used by patients in Illinois and Wisconsin before they became ill, which include Dank Vapes, Moon Rocks, Off White and TKO.

In her testimony to the subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on September 25, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC, said, “There are a complex set of root causes at play here that will be difficult for us as a nation to address. We need to take it very seriously. There are a set of supply chains that are underground that are adulterating the products in ways that are just experimental that are building on a population that is addicted to e-cigarettes. We have a very vulnerable population and a very challenging difficult supply chain we need to address.”

As the initial study published in the NEJM in September noted, all patients suffer from profound weakness and shortness of breath. They require hospitalization and supplemental oxygenation. Many are treated in the intensive care unit, and some have significant lung injury necessitating ventilator assist to breath. Some are placed on cardio-pulmonary bypass to oxygenate their blood while their lungs have time to heal. Most have recovered and are sent home after a few days or weeks. The long-term impact on their lung function remains to be determined.

Student protests in Indonesian Papua suppressed by police violence

Owen Howell

A protest involving thousands of students and workers in Wamena in the Indonesian province of Papua on September 23 was brutally attacked by police and military forces, resulting in at least 32 deaths and 66 injuries.

It is to date the most violent event in this year’s protests in Indonesian Papua, now in their eighth week. The protests first erupted on August 17 when police, soldiers, and Islamic militia members assaulted Papuan students in the East Javan city of Surabaya.

The Wamena protest was apparently sparked by an incident two days earlier, in which a non-Papuan teacher at a senior high school described one of his indigenous students as “a monkey.” The students of SMA PGRI Wamena high school were outraged and immediately took to their phones to share the story with students from other local schools. Within two days around 5,000 students joined them on the streets.

On the morning of the Wamena protest, workers and university students from the town and surrounding villages marched alongside the high school students, forming a large demonstration. Police and military officers deployed in Wamena responded by opening fire on the crowd. Horrified and angered by the sudden shootings, the protesters set fire to several government buildings.

Later that day, President Joko Widodo stated in a press conference that the clash between protesters and security personnel had been provoked by the spread of “fake news”—or, as he called it, “a hoax” perpetrated by Papuan separatist groups. This was reiterated by police, who alleged that pro-independence activists had dressed up in school uniforms and effectively led the march.

Widodo further claimed that an armed criminal group had descended from the nearby mountains and swept through the town, stirring up riots and torching homes. He provided no evidence whatsoever for these claims, nor did he elaborate on the name or leaders of the marauding group.

The official police report argued that the majority of victims were non-Papuan migrants who had been targeted by native Papuan rioters and died from stab and arrow wounds, and from being trapped inside burning buildings. This is characteristic of the government’s efforts to divide working people along ethnic lines and whip up racist sentiment. Antara, the national news agency, closely linked to the state apparatus, reported that 16 non-Papuans and only one native Papuan were killed, while 66 others were maimed “by the rioters brandishing machetes and arrows.”

The government has attempted to cloak the Papuan protests in secrecy, shutting down internet services and imposing a ban on international journalists. First-hand accounts, however, have leaked out despite government censorship and presented a sharply contrasting picture of the Wamena shootings. Witnesses told foreign media outlets about the police violence and suggested the true death toll may be significantly higher than the official toll of 32 people.

An anonymous university student, 19, explained the involvement of the police to the Guardian: “There was a shootout and we fought back with rocks and arrows. The police shot at the Papuans. There were about 16 to 20 people who died directly on the street that I saw.” Yance, 18, a student told Al Jazeera the he saw his friend being shot in the chest after police had blanketed the crowd in tear gas.

Another witness saw victims of the police brutality being brought to the Wamena hospital after the shooting, including a young student who had been shot in the back. The following day, he saw six bodies laid out in the hospital’s morgue, who all appeared to be of “high school age.” Police and military patrols have since been observed guarding the entrance of the hospital, blocking access to anyone trying to verify the number of deaths. The police presence has also made it difficult for families to visit their injured relatives.

Government authorities have continued their cover up. Ahmad Mustofa Kamal, the police spokesman of Papua province, insisted that police had not received any reports of protesters being harmed by gunfire. But this is not the first time that the national police have flatly denied using extreme violence against protesters.

On August 28, a large gathering of protesters in Deiyai regency stood outside the Regent’s Office asking the Regent to sign a joint statement they had written. Soldiers and police officers, waiting inside the building, proceeded to fire gunshots into the crowd, killing at least eight people. Mobile phone signals were disrupted in the area of the shooting. Dedi Prasetyo, a police spokesman, denied the use of gunfire and told the media that no one was killed in the incident except two policemen.

The use of police state measures in West Papua is an attempt to crush any form of resistance to the abuse of democratic rights and the economic and social crisis facing working people. President Widodo has visited the Papuan provinces five times since his 2014 election and has promised better living conditions for impoverished Papuans. However, conditions have only continued to deteriorate.

After the shootings in Wamena, as many as 4,000 people were forced to evacuate. Residents are also fleeing the town and the entire regency, Jayawijaya, of their own volition, after hearing of a huge military deployment due to arrive in the area. Tens of thousands of civilians throughout the West Papua region have been forced from their homes by security forces.

According to Veronica Koman, an Indonesian human rights lawyer, some of the 6,000 troops currently stationed in West Papua are being employed to blockade roads connecting villages, towns, and regencies, in order to prevent protesters in different areas from uniting in force.

Unintimidated, the Papuan protesters have continued demonstrating, drawing strength from recent student movements in Jakarta and other major cities. Over the last two weeks, tens of thousands of students across the country protested the Widodo government’s proposed regressive criminal code. In the wake of the Wamena shootings, the students stood in full support of the Papuan protesters and demanded an “end to militarism” in West Papua.

While protesters have been calling for Papuan independence from Indonesia, such a move will not benefit ordinary working people but represents the interests of a small elite layer that seek to profit from foreign investment seeking to exploit resources and cheap labour. Workers and students in Indonesian Papua should turn to their class brothers and sisters across the Indonesian archipelago and internationally in a united struggle against social inequality and the capitalist profit system.

Workers in stone fabrication industry worldwide at high risk of deadly lung disease, CDC finds

Jessica Goldstein

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a report which detailed the results of an investigation into 18 cases of silicosis, a deadly occupational lung disease for which there is no cure, among workers in the stone fabrication industry across the US states of California, Colorado, Texas, and Washington from 2017 to 2019. Two of the cases reportedly resulted in death.

Silicosis is characterized by intense scarring and inflammation of the lungs. Patients who suffer from silicosis bear many of the same symptoms as those diagnosed with pneumonia and tuberculosis, such as shortness of breath, persistent cough, fever and bluish skin. In 2013, silicosis killed 46,000 people around the world. No cure is known, yet some experimental treatments such as inhalation of powdered aluminum and corticosteroid therapy have been used.

The report found that most of the cases were in workers under 50 years old, with several under the age of 40. The disease is caused by inhaling tiny particles of crystalline silica, which are released into the air when workers cut, grind and sand pieces of marble, granite and engineered stone for finishing, particularly for use in the fabrication of kitchen and bathroom countertops. Workers also inhale the dust when cleaning and sweeping workplaces where the dust accumulates.

Lung showing nodular silicosis [Credit: Wikimedia Commons]

The CDC report found the most severe cases of silicosis to be found in workers who work with engineered stone. Engineered stone is a manufactured quartz-based composite material that can contain over 90 percent crystalline silica, compared to less than 45 percent in natural granite. The report also noted that the popularity of engineered stone for use in manufacturing countertops has spiked in recent years, noting an 800 percent growth in demand for quartz surface imports to the United States between 2010 and 2018.

Significantly, the CDC investigation highlighted the international character of the incidence of silicosis and the overall effects of the stone fabrication industry on workers’ health. Silicosis was found to have been reported among other workers in the same industry in other countries around the world. Before the investigation was published, only one case had been reported previously in the United States.

Mass protests against endemic poverty, government corruption convulse Haiti

Richard Dufour

Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince and several other major cities have been virtually shut down for the past three weeks in a continuation of mass anti-government protests that have erupted at regular intervals since July of last year. Impoverished youth from working-class neighborhoods have come out by the tens of thousands to denounce their hellish conditions of life.

The recent mass demonstrations have been accompanied by road blocks and clashes with police in response to their indiscriminate use of tear gas, water cannons, and live ammunition. At least seventeen people have died since the latest round of protests began in mid-September, according to a Haitian human rights organization.

Protestors are denouncing, among other things, a chronic lack of fuel that has kept schools closed for weeks, disrupted hospital services and resulted in widespread power outages; a precipitous decline of the Haitian currency (the gourde) in relation to the US dollar and a near 20 percent inflation rate that has put basic food items increasingly out of reach for the majority of the population; and the brazen theft of public funds by politicians in all parts of the government –including the Presidency, the various ministries, the Senate and the lower house of the legislature.

The main demand of the protestors, however, is the ousting of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and his prosecution for extrajudicial killings of government opponents and massive corruption. According to a 600-page report issued last June by the country’s Audit Court (Cour Supérieure des Comptes), two Moïse-controlled companies were given public road construction contracts worth over a million dollars for which no actual work was ever done. The contracts were awarded under the previous president, the neo-Duvalierist Michel Martelly, who, with Washington’s backing, helped rig the 2016 election to bring Moïse to power.

The money for the bogus road contracts came from the so-called PetroCaribe fund, which was built up over a ten-year period starting in 2007 from government sales of subsidized Venezuelan oil. The total amount that passed through this fund in Haiti is estimated to have been over two billion dollars. Awarded by Venezuela to Haiti and a number of other Caribbean nations, in the face of fierce opposition by the US government, this money was meant to help finance social programs and public infrastructure projects, but was largely looted by Haiti’s political elite and their business cronies.

In addition to Moïse, a number of high-profile politicians, including former President Martelly, have been accused of misappropriating PetroCaribe funds, of which very little remains.

The July 2018 protests that initiated the recurring cycle of mass anti-Moïse demonstrations were themselves triggered by an up to 50-percent increase of at-the-pump gasoline prices. That hike was made under direct orders from the IMF. With the Venezuelan government compelled to stop the assistance program due to deepening economic crisis at home, the IMF insisted Haiti must stop subsidizing the price of oil and squeeze the masses of the poorest country in the Western hemisphere still harder, so as to pay back the country’s debts to the world’s big banks.

The current resistance movement of the Haitian working class and oppressed masses is part of a resurgence of class struggle internationally, as seen with similar protests in every part of the world–from the mass anti-government demonstrations in Ecuador and Puerto Rico, to strikes by US, Mexican and Korean auto workers, the Yellow Vest movement in France, and the mass popular mobilizations that have led to the fall of presidents in Algeria and Sudan.

Moïse and his corrupt and repressive regime are fitting representatives of Haiti’s venal ruling class. But the chief bulwark of capitalist rule in Haiti, and the principal cause of the endemic poverty, squalor and brutal social relations that characterize contemporary Haiti, is imperialism, above all US imperialism.

Beginning with the 1915-34 US Marines’ occupation of Haiti, Washington has repeatedly invaded and occupied the tiny, but densely populated country, and supported and sustained in power a succession of right-wing repressive regimes. Most notorious of these was the nearly three decades-long dictatorship of “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier. As in many countries, Washington long used Haiti’s army as its principal instrument for maintaining its domination, instigating repeated bloody coups.

Democratically-elected governments headed by the former liberation theology priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide were twice overthrown by “made in USA” coups, first in 1991 and then 2004, although Aristide pledged fidelity to Washington and worked with the IMF and other imperialist institutions. In 2004, the US, Canada and France connived in a rebellion led by former Haitian army officers and Tonton Macoutes, then sent in troops to “stabilize” the country and kidnap Aristide, who was hustled onto a plane destined for the remote Central African Republic.

Since the mid-1980s, Haiti has been subject to repeated IMF-style “neo-liberal” economic restructuring programs, aimed at increasing imperialist domination of its economy and transforming it into an ultra-cheap labour producer of garments and other low-tech manufactured goods.

The results have been ruinous. Unrestricted US rice and other food imports led to the virtual destruction of the Haitian peasantry, while a spiraling state debt was used to siphon the country’s meager resources into the coffers of Western financial institutions.

Today the Moïse government is clinging to power only thanks to the support of Washington, and its French and Canadian allies. Leaders of the so-called Core Group of countries, they have repeatedly offered to “mediate” between the government and opposition leaders, while cynically declaiming on the need to uphold the “rule of law” and “democracy,” i.e. to keep the current government in power.

On Sept. 26, the US Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan met with Moïse’s foreign minister, Bocchit Edmond.

President Vizcarra dissolves Congress in response to conflict within Peruvian state

Armando Cruz

President Martin Vizcarra is ruling Peru by decree after succeeding in dissolving the country’s parliament. The legislative body will resume its functions only after new elections scheduled for January 26.

Vizcarra had announced the dissolution of Congress on September 30, hours after its members refused to debate a vote of confidence (cuestion de confianza), giving the president the constitutional power to dissolve Congress and call new elections.

The leadership of Congress immediately denounced the dissolution as a coup d’état and an “unconstitutional” action, refusing recognize its validity. Meanwhile, on the streets of Lima and other major cities, crowds came out to defend the president’s decision.

The dissolution of Congress was the explosive culmination of a protracted struggle within Peru’s state, a conflict between the executive and legislative branches. This battle had raged since Vizcarra’s predecessor, the right-wing former Wall Street financier Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, narrowly defeated Keiko Fujimori, the right-wing populist leader of the fujimorista Fuerza Popular (FP), in the 2016 election.

Both Kuczynski and Keiko Fujimori are now being held under “preventive detention” while prosecutors gather evidence related to bribes that they both received from the Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht (part of the so-called “Lava Jato” investigation).

Kuczynski took office in July 2016—with Vizcarra and the right-wing technocrat Mercedes Araoz as his first and second vice-presidents, respectively. He had no real base of support within the population, winning the election at the last minute thanks to the support of pseudo-left leaders Veronika Mendoza and Marco Arana, who lined up behind him as the “lesser evil.”

However, 83 FP lawmakers were elected to Congress, giving the fujimoristas virtually total control over the legislative branch. Fujimori, embittered after losing an election she thought she had in her pocket, ordered her party members to obstruct and undermine Kuczynski’s government.

Ever since, the FP has transformed Congress into its own reactionary political platform. It placed its allies and militants in key state positions, while protecting judges, prosecutors and its own congressmen from investigations. It voted down anti-corruption measures, undermining Kuczynki’s government, while attacking and bringing down its ministers.

Among other things, it used a congressional commission formed to investigate presidents and other senior public officials who received Odebrecht’s bribes as an instrument to clear Fujimori and Alan Garcia of the APRA party—its congressional ally—while trying to send its political rivals, such as former President Ollanta Humala (2011-2016) and Kuczynski himself, to jail.

But this abuse of power came with a high price: by mid-2018, opinion polls indicated that the FP had lost support within its working class and lower middle class base. The party had based itself on the populist legacy of the original fujimorista government of Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), Keiko’s father, who was jailed for the massacres carried out by his authoritarian regime. In response to the FP’s thuggish and dictatorial methods, spontaneous protests began demanding the dissolution of Congress, mainly led by young people.

Kuczynki resigned in March 2018 amidst a scandal over vote-buying to avoid an impeachment set by FP congressmen. Vizcarra took office, and he and his cabinet decided not to pursue a confrontation with Fujimori or contest her control of Congress, in order to better implement the right-wing, neoliberal policies demanded by big business and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

However, things changed in late October when a judge approved the demand by anti-corruption attorneys for preventively incarcerating Fujimori to prevent her from obstructing the Lava Jato investigation. The attorneys’ theory is that Fujimori was the leader of a “criminal organization” that used the FP as an apparatus for laundering Odebrecht’s bribe money. Fujimori has since been incarcerated in the Santa Monica prison for women in Chorrillos, Lima. She ordered her subordinates in Congress to pressure the judiciary and the courts for her release and to once again obstruct the executive power.

Meanwhile, Vizcarra was enjoying a relatively high approval rating. This stemmed mainly from his not having been charged with corruption or taking bribes from Odebrecht, like the last four presidents. He exploited this perception by announcing a set of reforms of the judiciary after a corruption scandal involving judges and attorneys.

One of the main props sustaining Vizcarra’s government has been the refusal of the pseudo-left to confront his right-wing policies. The Vizcarra administration is defending and expanding the neo-liberal pro-business framework established by

Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s, after he himself dissolved parliament in what amounted to a parliamentary coup. The government continues to hand over the country’s rich mineral resources to international investors, without regard to the environment and the population. Pseudo-left forces such as Mendoza’s Nuevo Peru and Arana’s Frente Amplio refuse to engage in a fight against these policies for fear it would threaten the collapse of the whole capitalist state, which they support. Instead, they channel the anger of the working class and youth exclusively against the right-wing fujimoristas in Congress.

On July 28, during his Independence Day speech, Vizcarra announced his surprise proposal for early elections. He invoked the “voice of the people” for his decision but also presented it as a way to get the country out of the crisis provoked by the enmity between the executive and legislative powers. The measure was welcomed by the population with nearly 70 percent of approval, expressing widespread disgust with the FP-led Congress.

With dozens of congressmen facing corruption charges once their constitutional immunity as lawmakers ends, Vizcarra’s proposal was unsurprisingly opposed by the right-wing opposition caucuses, chiefly among them the FP. This opposition was joined by Vice-President Araoz, a representative of big business in Peru.

On September 26, the Congressional Commission on the Constitution—dominated by staunch fujimoristas—voted to shelve Vizcarra’s proposal for early elections, fueling the population’s anger and immediately prompting new street protests demanding the dissolution of the fujimorista-dominated Congress.

Meanwhile, Fujimori, from jail, decided to play her last card for her release from prison, ordering FP congressmen to push forward the election of six new members of the Constitutional Tribunal (CT), a body of 10 judges that could vote to release her.

Having a CT run by friendly judges was also a matter of life and death for FP and APRA lawmakers, since it is the only institution that can deprive congressmen of their legal immunity. With new information coming from Odebrecht in Brazil about bribes given to congressmen, the FP and other opposition parties joined in frenetically rushing to the election of judges in a matter of days, a process that usually had taken months under previous governments. Further discrediting this election, the CT’s incumbent vice-president, Maria Ledezma, revealed that an unnamed congressman had offered to re-elect her if she would vote for the release of Fujimori.

After failed negotiations with the opposition, Vizcarra responded on September 27 by announcing a vote of confidence for the implementation of a new bill that would reform and make “more transparent” the CT’s election mechanism. On Sunday, he declared during a TV interview he would dissolve Congress if it rejected this vote of confidence. According to the constitution, the president can dissolve Congress if it rejects two votes of confidence. Congress had already rejected one vote of confidence under Kuczynski two years ago, so Vizcarra’s dissolution would be technically constitutional.

Hundreds of Extinction Rebellion protesters arrested in central London

Steve James

The number of arrests of Extinction Rebellion (XR) climate protestors in London topped 500 yesterday, in a naked display of state repression designed to intimidate and silence political and social opposition among much broader layers.

By 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, the capital’s Metropolitan Police had arrested 212 peaceful protesters, after having arrested an initial 319 protesters by midnight on Monday. To this total must be added 10 “pre-emptive” arrests made Saturday by dozens of officers from the Metropolitan police’s territorial support group.

Police on Whitehall confronting protesters

The specialist riot police raided a building in Kennington, south London, where Extinction Rebellion was storing its equipment, using a battering ram to smash their way in. Activists who had begun moving equipment from the site were also arrested and their vehicles impounded. The activists were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause public nuisance. XR reported that police seized items such as tents, toilets, disabled access equipment, wheelie bins, solar panels, hot water bottles, cooking urns and flasks.

XR is seeking to raise public awareness of global warming, while demanding policy changes from the world’s governments. London is the focal point of a globally coordinated series of protests which have seen, according to XR’s web site, hundreds of arrests in 60 cities around the world—including Melbourne and Sydney, New York, Berlin, Paris, Mumbai, Buenos Aires and Cape Town. Over the weekend, Berlin protesters surrounded the Siegesaul and blocked the Brandenburg gate. In New York, the famous Wall Street capitalist Charging Bull was covered in fake blood.

Police arrest Extinction Rebellion protester

In London Monday, XR supporters targeted 12 sites in the centre of the city for occupations, sit-ins and protests. The group intend to continue for up to two weeks. The sites were at traffic thoroughfares close to central government buildings, including Lambeth Bridge, the Mall, Trafalgar Square, Westminster Bridge, Millbank, Downing Street and Smithfield Market.

As many as 30,000 protesters were involved Monday in myriad activities—making speeches at open mike sessions, pitching tents, banging drums, chaining or gluing themselves to vehicles, sitting in the road, spraying messages on public buildings, dancing, milling about and marching. One couple got married. Another group played cricket in Parliament Square. Groups of striking, red-clad street statues marched in silence, others did yoga. Ages of participants ranged at least from 9 to 83 years. Occupations included farmers, social workers, doctors, actors, models and students. Celebrities supporting them included actors Sir Mark Rylance and Ruby Wax.

In contrast, police attempted to brutally break up the protests, smash up temporary stages and arrest as many people as possible. On Tuesday morning, remaining protesters, many in tents, were told they would be arrested unless they moved to Trafalgar Square under the Public Order Act.

The protests developed from a similar event in April this year, also in London, which ultimately saw over 1,130 people arrested in the largest mass arrests in Britain since the riots of 2011. Those saw more than 5,000 arrests nationally, more than 4,350 arrests in London alone, with over 1,292 people imprisoned for a total of over 1,800 years.

If police arrest 300 people a day during the current protests, the total will end up at around 4,200 at the end of the 14 days. This is on top of the 1,130 XR protesters already arrested in April. In a blatantly intimidatory move, the Metropolitan Police are seeking to prosecute all those arrested.

Specialist “protest removal teams” of police have been mobilised from across the UK, while the Met has increased shift teams and cancelled other police work to confront the protesters. Those who refused to move had their tents cut open, after which they were arrested.

Police are intent on preventing extended protests from being allowed to develop, particularly in key traffic choke points. The XR protesters were attacked by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who described the thousands of concerned, largely middle-class people as “nose-ringed climate change protesters” and “denizens of the heaving hemp-smelling bivouacs that now litter Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park.”

Workers must vigorously oppose the mass arrests of protesters whose only crime is to seek a way out of the terrible environmental calamity threatening humanity. The methods being developed against XR are in preparation for far broader use against the working class in the period immediately ahead.

US protects NSA spy’s wife wanted in UK over teenager’s death

Laura Tiernan

The Trump administration is refusing to waive immunity for the wife of a senior US spy, who fled the UK after she was involved in a head-on collision more than a month ago that killed 19-year-old Harry Dunn.

Anne Sacoolas, 42, is wanted by police over the death of the young motorcyclist in Northamptonshire on August 27. She was reportedly travelling on the wrong side of the road for up to 400 metres and collided head-on with Dunn, who suffered horrific multiple injuries.

The accident took place near the RAF base at Croughton, a US Airforce spy base otherwise known as the Joint Intelligence Analysis Centre.

Sacoolas, a former US State Department employee, has been widely described in the press as the wife of a diplomat, but in fact her husband Jonathan Sacoolas is a National Security Agency (NSA) spy. A lawyer acting for Dunn’s family told the Mail on Sunday that Jonathan Sacoolas “was working with intelligence which is, I guess, why it has been handled in the way that it has.”

The crash location

Northamptonshire police have confirmed that “diplomatic immunity had been raised as an issue” when they met with Anne Sacoolas the day after the crash. No further details surrounding this initial claim have been divulged.

According to the Guardian’s Diplomatic Editor Patrick Wintour, “US staff, including civilian staff and their dependents, at designated military bases in the UK, including RAF Croughton, are protected under the Visiting Forces Act 1952, reinforced by further legislation in 1964. They are able to claim some legal immunity in the UK.”

After news of Sacoolas’s flight broke over the weekend, the British media highlighted police claims that the suspect had “engaged fully” following the incident. Police Superintendent Sarah Johnson said Sacoolas “had previously confirmed... that she had no plans to leave the country in the near future.”

Police accepted the suspect’s empty assurances of full cooperation, concluding she was not a “flight risk.” This defies innocent explanation. If Sacoolas was “fully engaged” in helping the investigation, why was she dangling the threat of diplomatic immunity the day after the crash?

The official timeline surrounding these events is deliberately murky.

Northamptonshire police responded to Sacoolas’s assertion of diplomatic immunity by applying to the US embassy for a waiver to arrest and formally interview the suspect. But US embassy officials later—at an unreported date—told police the waiver had been refused and that Sacoolas had already left the country.

According to Tuesday’s Daily Mail, “Government sources said Mrs. Sacoolas and her family were ‘put on a plane’ within hours of learning she may face charges. Harry’s family believe she flew out quickly as her husband is a spy and US authorities wanted to ensure his identity was not compromised.”

Police were preparing to charge Sacoolas with dangerous driving causing death and had reportedly prepared a file for the Crown Prosecution Service. On Tuesday, Northamptonshire Chief Constable Nick Adderley said he had written to the US embassy “in the strongest terms, urging them to apply the diplomatic immunity waiver.”

Harry Dunn’s parents, Charlotte and Tim, have spoken out publicly, calling on Sacoolas to return to the UK and face questioning over their son’s death. Harry Dunn told SkyNews on Tuesday, “Our understanding is that she was compliant with police and admitted at the time she was in the wrong. We know from police she was going to stay in the country and committed to being here for three years. So, to hear the news from police [that she had fled the UK] a few weeks after the funeral was devastating.”

Harry Dunn's parents speaking out this week

Charlotte said, “She’s left a family in complete ruin. We’re broken inside and out… We’re just utterly shocked and appalled that somebody is allowed to get on a plane and go home and avoid our justice system. We’re not a horrible family, we’re just a usual UK family who just need to put a face to what we now have as a name and talk to her, find out how she’s feeling. She’s got to be suffering as well, you know, she’s a mum.”

The stand taken by Dunn’s parents met with immediate public sympathy. A GoFundMe appeal raised more than £10,000 towards legal costs in just a few days and #Justice4Harry was trending yesterday on social media. The family has said it will pursue matters legally in the US.