US rural county jails see a rapid rise in incarceration rates

Benjamin Mateus

A recent report by Vera Institute of Justice, People in Jail 2019, found that at mid-year 2019 there were an estimated 758,400 people held in local jails, an increase of 1.8 percent from mid-year 2017. This does not take into account the more than 1.5 million prisoners held in federal and state facilities. Though the population in local jails is half that in state and federal prisons, a 2014 analysis found that more than 11 million people had circulated through the jails that year, a rate 20 times higher than those admitted to prisons the same year.

The peak in incarcerations in jails occurred in 2009, after which a slow decline was noted until 2015. Between mid-year 2019 and 2015, there have been more 31,000 incarcerations, a 4.3 percent increase. As the report explains, “most people in jail have not been convicted of the charges they are facing, and many are being detained in civil matters, such as people incarcerated pretrial for immigration cases or those incarcerated due to unpaid child support or fines and fees.”

The jail incarceration rate in the US stands at 368 per 100,000 working-age adults. When compared to their historic lows more than six decades ago, jail incarceration rates are 2.8 times higher today.

What is particularly notable about the findings in the study is the changing trends in local jail populations across the “urban to rural continuum.” Since 2013 to the present, rural counties have seen jail populations rise 27 percent—from 145,341 to 184,295 residents. Small to mid-sized cities have also seen a modest 7 percent increase—from 242,184 to 260,169 residents.

© World Socialist Web Site

By comparison, urban counties have had an 18 percent decline—from 203,143 to 166,979 residents. Suburban counties have seen a 1 percent decline—from 148,674 to 146,976 residents. Jail incarceration rates in 2019 were more than double for rural counties’ jails compared to urban centers. The rural population accounts for nearly one-quarter of the total population in local jails.

The data demonstrates that the growing trend in incarceration is directly related to the rising incarceration rates in rural counties. According to the report, since 2013, rural counties have held 39,000 more residents in local jails while small and mid-sized cities have held 18,000 more people. In large metropolitan regions with more than 1 million residents, jail populations have declined. Specifically, cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, Buffalo, Nashville and Oakland have all seen a more than 25 percent decrease.

Interestingly, though incarcerated populations declined between 2008 and 2015 by 7.4 percent, jail capacities have increased in the same period by 10.4 percent, with a total capacity of 915,100. More than 20 percent of jail occupancy presently remains unused. This average figure, however, hides the reality of overcrowded jails in rural counties such as Hamblen in Tennessee, where their 255-bed jail holds 439 inmates.

According to Vera, one factor contributing to this rise is the impact of the immigration crisis on detention facilities. As cited by their study, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been transferring a growing number of those apprehended as illegal immigrants to local jails that have contracted with the federal government to boost their threadbare budgets. Since 2013, there has been a 23 percent increase in the number of immigrants detained, with an estimated 22,900 being held in local jails in October through November 2017.

Another major factor has been the impact of the opioid crisis, specifically in rural communities that have been devastated by the crisis. In 2017, there were more than 72,000 overdose deaths reported, making it the second leading cause of death in the US for people age 15-49.

In a 2019 study published in Lancet Public Health, “Economic Decline, Incarceration, and Mortality from drug use disorder in the USA between 1983 and 2014—an observational analysis,” the authors state that since 1980, mortality rates from drug use disorders have increased more than 600 percent.

The Lancet analysis of 2,640 US counties between 1983 and 2014 found there was at least a 10-fold increase in drug use disorder demonstrated over this period. They found a strong association specifically with economic hardship, incarceration rates, and a higher number of drug deaths.

The report notes: “Our findings suggest a strong association between the rise in incarceration rates and mortality rates from drug use disorders, over and above the potential effects of low household income and other important con-founders. We also highlight a largely neglected dimension of the US criminal justice system—local jails—which are independently associated with drug deaths.”

Incarceration leads to job losses, diminishing prospects, the social stigma of arrest, and a revolving cycle that feeds into itself the endless perpetuation of drug abuse and incarceration. Lack of resources to treat addiction in rural areas, along with county budget shortfalls, is leading to a rapid social decay of these communities. Many who are incarcerated are already mentally ill, having committed misdemeanors such as failure to pay fines or child support, but are unable to post bail while awaiting trial or sentencing.

Incarceration leads to declining incomes for families. Mental illness associated with the stress and anxiety of non-incarcerated spouses and family members creates unstable social relationships, driving the effect more broadly and deeply into the social fabric until there is little left to salvage. See Vera map on pretrial incarceration rates.

According to the Safety + Justice Challenge website:

• While the rate at which legally presumed innocent people are held in jail pretrial has grown 223 percent nationwide since 1970, it has risen 436 percent in rural counties, driven in large part by rural areas in the South and West.

• Despite their higher jail incarceration rates, rural counties have lower crime rates: their property crime rate is three-quarters, and violent crime rate is two-thirds, those of cities. While the opioid crisis that is unfolding in predominately rural areas is currently under a national spotlight, rural jail incarceration was on an upward trajectory well before the recent crisis.

• Rural jails have a more limited tax base than cities and experience resource challenges that contribute to their reliance on incarceration, including remote location of courts, scarce public defender services, and few diversion and pretrial services programs.

• It is now common practice for jails to rent out extra beds to other jails, state prisons and federal authorities. However, rural areas now use jail beds for purposes other than their own at a rate 888 percent higher than in 1978, while rates in urban areas increased by only 134 percent.

• The expanded use of rented jail beds in rural counties is driven in part by financial incentives, as other agencies offer a per-diem rate for each incarcerated person held in a local jail that can help fill budget gaps or even be used to justify a jail expansion.

Since its nadir in the 1960s, when state and federal prisons held less than 200,000 inmates, incarceration rates peaked in the mid-2000s to 800 per 100,000 residents, with approximately 2.2 million incarcerated people. When those under correctional supervision are included, the number in the justice system under supervision (for 2012 figures) reached an astronomical 7 million individuals.

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The preceding three decades that accompanied the massive incarceration of the population through the establishment of draconian sentencing reforms, put into practice as getting tough on crime, went hand in hand with a massive attack on the working class through deindustrialization, wage cuts and the dismantling of benefits and pensions.

While Wall Street enriched itself through speculative investments, the working class faced a demolition of welfare programs, food stamps and unemployment benefits. The cost of living spiked and household debt soared. The creation of a modern police state was a necessary outcome of this counteroffensive by the bourgeoise state.

Report finds US corporations paid “zero to negative” income tax rate in 2018

Jessica Goldstein

Three hundred and seventy-nine highly profitable Fortune 500 corporations in the United States paid an average effective federal income tax of just 11.3 percent in 2018 as a result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed into law by President Donald Trump in December of 2017. This was one of the key findings of a report published Monday by the nonprofit tax policy organization, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).

The report also found that more than half of the 379 companies, or 195, paid less than half of the new statutory corporate tax rate of 21 percent. Fifty-six companies paid effective tax rates of between zero and 5 percent in 2018. Ninety-one highly profitable corporations paid zero or less (negative) income tax in 2018.

The report explains that negative corporate tax rates can occur “because a corporation carries back excess tax deductions and/or credits to an earlier year or years and receives a tax refund check from the US Treasury Department.” In total, these highly profitable corporations received $6.29 billion in tax rebates.

The Trump plan was passed without any serious opposition from Democratic lawmakers, who voted against the bill but refused to appeal to or mobilize popular opposition to it, knowing that the measure would pass in both the House and Senate, which at the time were both under Republican control. The Democrats openly supported a somewhat smaller tax windfall for corporations, along the lines of a bill introduced under the Obama administration.

The cut in the corporate tax rate to 21 percent was a decrease of 40 percent from the previous 35 percent rate. That some of the most profitable corporations paid so much less than this already lowered rate was, according to the report, “by design,” a result of loopholes in the 2017 tax law that affected the overall tax rate.

According to ITEP, just 25 companies accounted for over half of the federal tax subsidies doled out at the expense of the working class. Many of those 25 include financial giants such as JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, and other monopolies like Wal-Mart, Comcast and AT&T.

Loopholes include accelerated depreciation, which allows companies to take larger upfront write-offs on the expected wear and tear of newly purchased equipment, and special deductions for the stock options included in executive compensation packages.

The corporations that were allowed to get away with paying zero or negative federal income tax rates include:

* Starbucks Corporation, which reaped $4.774 billion in profits in 2018 and received a $75 million tax rebate, effectively paying -1.6 percent in taxes. The corporation is notorious for paying workers low wages, forcing them to work unhealthy schedules and fostering an abusive and hostile work climate.

One worker wrote recently about his experience at Starbucks on the job review website indeed.com: “Terrible company with terrible leadership, can’t pay a living wage to their employees, all they do is threaten their managers, handicap them from doing their jobs, and make as much money as possible over the safety and well-being of their employees and customers. They don’t actually care about the experience, they just want money.”

* Amazon.com, which took in $10.84 billion in profits and was taxed -1.2 percent in 2018. The corporate giant received a $29 million rebate primarily due to a loophole in the tax code for treatment of stock options for executives.

Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos is currently the richest man in the world with a personal net worth of over $113 billion. The monopolistic corporation makes much of its profits through a web of warehouses worldwide where highly exploited workers are under constant surveillance. The company spies on employees and tracks their every move. Under physically demanding conditions, workers are paid just barely enough to survive. Many Amazon workers are homeless.

* FedEx, with $2.31 billion in profits in 2018, was taxed at an effective rate of -4.6 percent and received a rebate of $107 million. FedEx makes its profit off of a highly exploited global workforce that faces many of the same precarious and dangerous working conditions as UPS workers. The Teamsters union isolated the UPS workers from the FedEx workers and rammed through a sellout contract in 2018 despite a vote by the Teamsters rank and file against the contract.

* General Motors, which recorded $4.32 billion in profits in 2018, received a $104 million tax rebate, an effective tax rate of -2.4 percent. With the indispensable assistance of the United Auto Workers union, the company pushed through a sellout contract in October of this year following a 40-day strike.

General Motors headquarters in Detroit, Michigan

* United States Steel, which made a profit of $432 million, received a $40 million rebate and had an effective tax rate of -9.3 percent. Earlier this year, US Steel announced several hundred layoffs at its plants across the US and production shutdowns around the world after pushing through a concessions contract in 2018 with the help of the United Steelworkers union (USW) that stripped workers of job protections.

* Delta Airlines, which reaped $5.07 billion in profits during 2018, received $187 million in tax rebates, benefiting from an effective tax rate of -3.7 percent. Flight attendants have suffered serious injuries on the job only to be denied health care from the claims company Sedgwick, which Delta uses to process workers’ insurance claims.

Had the 379 corporations identified in the ITEP study paid 21 percent in federal income taxes, they would have owed $73.9 billion to the federal government. To put that $73.9 billion into perspective, it is more than the amount needed to make tuition free at public colleges across the US ($70 billion per year) and twice what it would cost per year to end world hunger ($30 billion).

Australian budget report points to impact of globally-driven slump

 Mike Head

Australian capitalism’s exposure to the recessionary slide, trade war tensions and political upheaval sweeping the globe was underscored by yesterday’s release of the government’s Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO).

Despite record low interest rates and large tax handouts, mostly to companies and the wealthy, the deepening economic slump forced the Liberal-National Coalition government to drastically cut its forecasts for economic growth and tax revenues. Predictions made in the last official forecast, issued during the May 18 federal election campaign, have been shattered.

Almost $22 billion has been wiped from the forecast budget surpluses for this and the next three financial years, due to revenues plummeting by almost $33 billion. Forecast household consumption growth of 1.75 percent in 2019-20 is a full one percentage point below the 2.75 percent tipped in May.

The fall in retail consumption spending is so steep that goods and services tax (GST) revenue, which is directed to the state governments, will fall by $9.9 billion over four years, including $1.8 billion this year.

As a result, there will be sharper cuts to both federal and state government social spending and public services, on top of a $1.4 billion reduction already made in federal spending this financial year, largely through cuts to welfare and public service staff levels.

This means an intensified assault on the living standards and social conditions of the working class, which have already suffered from years of stagnant or lower real wages, sending household debt levels to among the highest in the world.

Even according to the latest, equally unreliable, predictions in the MYEFO report, average wages growth will continue to stall at 2.25 to 2.5 percent—not enough to cover the real cost of living rises for working class households—for the next four years at least. This is a far cry from the pre-election claims of wages rising by 3.25 percent by 2020-21.

The government remains determined to produce a budget surplus this year, for the first time since the 2008-09 global financial crisis, in order to meet the demands of the money markets. But the MYEFO update halves the $45.1 billion in cumulative surpluses over four years predicted in the pre-election update.

The MYEFO downgrades gross domestic product (GDP) growth for this year from 2.75 percent to 2.25 percent, which indicates near-contraction compared to population growth. Unemployment forecast for this year and next has risen from 5 percent to 5.25 percent. That figure is a vast underestimate of the real levels of joblessness and casualised “under-employment.”

A revealing indicator of a worsening downturn is that the forecast for business investment growth was slashed from 5 percent to 1.5 percent this year. Corporate investment is drying up, with dire implications for the future, even though the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has cut its official interest rates three times since the election, to an historic low of 0.75 percent—far below the “emergency” level of 3 percent in 2009.

The MYEFO says global economic momentum has weakened since the election, with the US-China trade war, Brexit and financial instability in Italy, Turkey and South America major factors. “This continued uncertainty has weighed on business confidence and investment intentions, particularly in manufacturing,” the budget papers say.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg attempted to put a positive spin on the result, saying it still showed the economy was expected to grow faster than any nation in the G7—as if that were a comfort. “The Australian economy’s remarkable resilience has occurred in the face of strong global and domestic economic headwinds,” he said. While a severe drought and huge bushfires have reduced output, it is the global slump that is predominantly driving the “headwinds.”

Frydenberg rejected calls by sections of business for increased government spending to try to stimulate the economy. Instead, he expressed the hope that an end to the US-China trade war and the Brexit impasse would lift business and consumer sentiment. “Let’s just wait and see what happens from here,” Frydenberg said. In reality, the aggressive US drive to counter the rise of China, or any other perceived rival, will only deepen, while the fallout from Brexit is unlikely to ease, compounded by uncertainty over UK-European Union economic arrangements.

Corporate leaders are frustrated that the government’s pre-election pledge to eradicate net debt by the end of next decade has been abandoned. Since the 2008-09 breakdown, governments have accumulated $329 billion of net debt—nearly 20 percent of GDP.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently said the government would not be “panicked” into bringing forward stimulus measures. This reflects the dictates of the financial markets. S&P Global Ratings warned that “spending restraint by the government” was important to maintain its AAA credit rating.

In a statement, Frydenberg and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann pointed to the perilous reliance of the economy on foreign funds. They said: “We consider strong fiscal outcomes to be important for our ‘AAA’ rating on Australia because of the economy’s high level of external liabilities compared with its ‘AAA’ rated peers.”

The pair vowed that government spending would be restricted, to grow by just 1.3 percent annually in real terms over four years. This is less than the population growth of around 1.6 percent, so the deterioration of public services and infrastructure will worsen, especially in the large cities.

Perversely, the Australian share market rose to a near-record high after the MYEFO release. This was partly due to hopes of a boost from the global market reaction to the Conservative government’s election victory in Britain and Washington’s claims of a deal with China. But it was fuelled by expectations that the RBA would have to cut interest rates further in the new year, possibly to 0.25 percent, and resort to pumping money into the economy via “quantitative easing.” Lower interest rates already have channelled money into the stock exchange, chasing higher speculative returns.

Frydenberg said lower rates had helped stop a slide in property prices. This was “good for the economy because it plays into households’ confidence.” For millions of people, however, a renewed bubble in house prices means higher mortgages and rents.

While slashing social spending, the government is continuing to pour billions of dollars into war preparations. The latest auditor-general’s report, also released yesterday, shows that the cost of 26 military projects has risen by a total of $24 billion compared to what was originally announced, taking their bill up by nearly 60 percent to $64.1 billion.

The response of the Labor Party and the Australian Council of Trade Unions to the MYEFO was to back business calls for measures to stimulate spending and boost productivity. This is in line with Labor’s further lurch to the right since its election debacle, to openly advocate pro-business and “wealth creation” policies.

Corporate figures and media platforms urged the government to further gut spending and cut corporate taxes to drive up profits. The Murdoch empire’s Australian editorial today declared: “The Coalition must turn the screws on a heaving social welfare bureaucracy.” The Australian Financial Review demanded “supply-side reforms” to “make workplaces flexible” and a “pro-growth business investment allowance.”

Bougainville votes for independence from Papua New Guinea

John Braddock

The result of the independence vote on the islands which make up Bougainville, a semi-autonomous region of Papua New Guinea (PNG), was announced on December 10. Polling took place over two weeks with voters asked to choose between continued autonomy within PNG or becoming independent.

The Bougainville Referendum Commission chairman, former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, announced that 176,928 of a total 181,067—a 98.3 percent majority—chose independence. Only 3,043 voted for greater autonomy within PNG. The overwhelming result was achieved with a turnout of 85 percent of those enrolled.

The non-binding referendum was part of the 2001 Bougainville Peace Agreement which ended a protracted and bloody civil war that claimed some 15,000 lives. It was the culmination of a process initiated in 1997 by Australia, the former colonial power, after the PNG military failed to defeat an insurgency led by the self-styled Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA).

The Australian and PNG governments regarded crushing the uprising militarily as critical to secure mining interests on Bougainville and throughout PNG. Australian companies were at the forefront of plundering the country’s natural resources through highly profitable mining projects. After it became obvious that PNG could not defeat the BRA, Canberra changed tack to impose a settlement through the peace deal.

Under the agreement, the referendum vote must now be ratified by PNG’s parliament. A joint taskforce of the PNG and Autonomous Bougainville (ABG) governments is required to consult over the next phase of the process, without a fixed timeline. PNG Minister for Bougainville Affairs Puka Temu said he would not formally present the result to parliament until after consultation has taken place.

The PNG cabinet is reported to be considering up to ten years for a possible transition. Prime Minister James Marape assured the people of Bougainville the government had “heard” them, but did not explicitly commit to backing independence. He said the two governments must develop “a road map that leads to a lasting political settlement that the National Parliament can consider.”

Temu told Radio NZ last month that the national government will seek to ensure the vote does not trigger a break-up of PNG. In response to explosive social tensions across PNG created by the austerity measures and police-state policies of successive governments, opposition sentiment and separatist movements have erupted in East New Britain, Central Province, Lae, the Highlands and Northern (Oro) Province.

At the same time, expectations have been raised in Bougainville that the referendum will lead to independence. ABG President John Momis said both governments must “negotiate in good faith… with the aim of getting an outcome that is acceptable to both sides.” Radio NZ reported that within Bougainville, “security fears” will emerge if the result is not implemented quickly.

Sections of the pro-independence movement, such as the former militant group Me’ekamui, boycotted the poll claiming Bougainville is already independent following a 1990 Universal Declaration of Independence by late secessionist leader Francis Ona. Referendum security chairman Patrick Nisira, warned that “if we allow a gap in there, these people might come in and might actually convince people that the national government and the ABG are not genuine in what they’re doing.”

At the same time, a contest is underway, both within rival sections of the local elite and between various global mining companies over control of Bougainville’s single major asset, the huge Panguna gold and copper mine.

Following PNG’s formal independence in 1975, the mine provided 45 percent of the country’s export income. Panguna was operated by one of the world’s largest mining companies, the Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto group, but has been mothballed since the Bougainville crisis erupted. It is estimated to contain $US58 billion worth of mineral reserves.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on December 11 that the tussle for Panguna had already “sparked a race to promise the best deal and the highest royalties to landowners while stemming the environmental degradation that has ravaged Bougainville.” The race had set off “intense political disagreement between rival groups on the island.”

Overtures by Australian-led multinational mining companies have seen “intense politicking” among local landowner groups and political players on Bougainville. Momis initially supported a moratorium on mining at Panguna to avoid reigniting conflicts between landowner groups. The moratorium was established in early 2018, but the Bougainville government now appears to favour opening up the mine to underwrite independence.

Landowners are guaranteed rights under a 2015 Mining Act, but in order to raise funds for the referendum the government proposed in January to abolish those rights while allocating “near monopoly” rights to an Australian company, Caballus Mining. The legislation was rejected by the government’s legislative committee illustrating, according to the Herald, just “how politically contentious this issue will be in an independent Bougainville.”

The regional imperialist powers, Australia and New Zealand, which regard PNG as being on the front line of great power competition with China, will view any change to the geo-strategic order following any move to independence with hostility. As allies of Washington’s build up to war with Beijing, they allege China is aggressively seeking influence and economic power across the Pacific and are actively moving to counteract it.

In the lead-up to the referendum the Sydney-based Lowy Institute declared that whatever the outcome, Canberra must “step up its engagement” with Bougainville if it wished to remain “a trusted peace and security broker in Melanesia.” If the ABG is unable to reach agreement with PNG over future independence, the institute warned, “the Bougainville issue may precipitate another regional crisis.”

Australian media is already stirring up fears of purported Chinese designs on Bougainville. The Herald reported a “rumour” that in 2018 a Chinese delegation offered $US1 billion to help finance a transition to independence. The proposed “master plan” included a highway, airport, port, bridges and a luxury resort. The report alleged that China plans to use Bougainville’s mineral wealth as “collateral” for the deal.

In fact, it is Australian mining giants that are, in the words of the Herald, “slugging it out” to take first advantage of any opportunities. Besides Caballus, the list includes mining magnate Andrew Forrest’s company, Fortescue, another chaired by former Liberal Party defence minister David Johnston and one by luxury goods dealer Jeff McGlinn. Rio Tinto’s former subsidiary BCL is also involved as well as ASX-listed companies RTG Mining Inc. and Kalia Ltd. The latter has already been granted permits to explore the northern tip of Bougainville.

Ordinary people will gain nothing from this wheeling and dealing. Under limited autonomy the majority of the population has led a subsistence existence in rural hamlets and villages with widespread illiteracy and no funds for education, health and infrastructure. If “independence” does take place, a tiny elite layer will enrich itself on the crumbs from the profits of transnational miners, while most people continue to live in abject poverty and economic backwardness.

Malta: Masses take to the streets demanding resignation of Prime Minister Muscat

Marianne Arens

Masses of people have taken to the streets on the island of Malta to demand the resignation of the country’s prime minister following the murder of the Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Caruana Galizia, an anti-corruption activist and investigative journalist, was the victim of a targeted murder in October 2017.

She died following the detonation of bomb placed inside her car. The explosion of the radio-controlled bomb hurled the vehicle off the road and tore the 53-year-old woman’s body to pieces. A huge fireball burned everything in a few seconds.

Towards the end of November angry crowds had gathered in the Maltese capital of Valletta to demand the immediate resignation of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.

On December 1 Muscat then announced that his Partit Laburista (Labor Party, PL), the social democratic party of Malta, had agreed new elections for January 12, and that he would resign in the run-up to the election. This announcement, however, only fuelled the anger of the crowd. People held up posters demanding: “Muscat has to go. He has blood on his hands.” Thousands bore the photo of Daphne Galizia and others held posters bearing the text “Mafia” and “Shame.” Young protesters threw eggs at the prime minister’s official auto.

Activists from the “Graffiti” group have since occupied government buildings, beating drums and shouting “Mafia” and “criminals.” “It is no longer just about corruption, but about political murder,” the activists shouted.

At the start of this month, the family of the journalist filed a lawsuit demanding that the head of government, Joseph Muscat, be kept out of all investigations. They fear that he would hamper investigations and destroy evidence. The family has now joined the chorus of those calling for his immediate resignation.

Muscat’s closest co-workers and several ministers resigned at the end of November following the arrest of Muscat’s chief of staff, businessman Keith Schembri. Shortly after the attack, there were suspicions that the government was involved in what was obviously a contract killing. Now these suspicions have been confirmed.

Businessman Yorgen Fenech has also been charged and his accounts and assets frozen. On November 20, naval police arrested the billionaire as he was attempting to flee Malta on his luxury yacht. He is accused of conspiring to form a criminal organisation and participating in that organisation’s crimes. In a futile attempt to gain leniency, Fenech is alleged to have incriminated Muscat’s chief of staff Keith Schembri, declaring him to be the instigator of the murder.

The journalist Daphne Galizia was well known and respected in Malta for her journalistic work. The media outlet P olitico described her as a “one-woman WikiLeaks.” She had systematically researched the extent of corruption and money laundering by the island’s financial and business elite. Her blog, with 400,000 followers, had a larger readership than all of the newspapers in Malta put together.

In 2016, Galizia played a key role in uncovering Maltese ties to the Panama Papers. This scandal uncovered the enormous extent of tax evasion by the super-rich around the world based on 11 million leaked documents. Galizia uncovered mailbox companies in Panama belonging to the former Maltese energy and current tourism minister, Konrad Mizzi, and Muscat’s right-hand man Keith Schembri. Both men, like Muscat himself, are prominent Labour Party leaders.

The letterbox companies were founded shortly after the Labour Party took office in 2013, with six-figure amounts paid out each month. Another mailbox company led to Muscat’s wife, Michelle Muscat.

The revelations turned out to be politically explosive with implications reaching far beyond Malta. On January 1, 2017, Muscat assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, with the EU relying on Muscat as an important partner, both in negotiating Brexit and in enforcing the EU’s homicidal refugee policy. Muscat responded to the revelations by calling early elections, which he won, together with his party, on June 3, 2017. Nothing stood in the way of a second term in office.

This did not prevent Daphne Galizia, however, from publishing further blogs and detailed articles. She revealed that a criminal conspiracy rooted deep inside the government had turned Malta into a self-service centre for money laundering and tax evasion.

Shortly after taking office in 2013, the LP government placed an order for a new gas power plant. Malta’s biggest ever public construction project has three owners: the holding ElectroGas Malta, the state energy authority of Azerbaijan and the German company Siemens. The entrepreneur Yorgen Fenech, who made his fortune with casinos, hotels and luxury real estate, also sat on the ElectroGas board of directors.

As for the inhabitants of Malta, they have since had to pay for the operation of the power plant with billions of dollars in the form of taxes from their wages. At the same time, large sums of money were systematically used to pay bribes. Based on the Panama Papers the murdered journalist revealed that funds were apparently diverted to Panama through the services of Yorgen Fenech. The money then passed through a company registered in Dubai and owned by Yorgen Fenech named “17 Black.” Month after month, six-figure sums flowed into the ministers’ accounts.

Galizia exposed all of this in detail while she received death threats on almost a daily basis. One day she discovered her dog at her front door with its throat cut. Her house and car were set on fire several times. Politicians from the government, the various parties and opposition overwhelmed the courageous woman with lawsuits in order to ruin her financially. Several lawsuits stemmed from Muscat, but also from the leader of the opposition Nationalist Party, Adrian Delia, whom the journalist also accused of money laundering.

The last post that Galizia finished 20 minutes before her death concerned Muscat’s current chief of staff, businessman Keith Schembri.

“The fraudster Schembri claims not to be a cheater,” she wrote. “In fact, just a few days after Labour’s election victory in 2013, he and Minister Konrad Mizzi … founded a secret company in Panama … and searched all over the world for a dodgy bank that would accept them as customers. (In the end, they solved the problem by founding their own shady bank in Malta where they could hide in public.)” The article ends: “Wherever you look, there are swindlers. The situation is desperate.”

Twenty minutes later, Daphne Caruana Galizia was dead, blown up by a car bomb. The first person to discover the body was her eldest son Matthew.

Since then, the surviving family has refused to give any credibility to the Maltese state’s investigation. Galizia’s husband Peter and her sons Matthew, Andrew and Paul accused the government and the prime minister of being behind the attack from the start. When the government of Malta offered a million euro reward for clues leading to the perpetrators, the family refused to participate. Instead they expressed their solidarity with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, at that time confined to the embassy of Ecuador, who had offered a reward of €20,000 for assistance in finding those responsible for Galiza’s murder.

Matthew Galizia, himself a journalist, has since started the “Daphne Project” together with independent international journalists. The project is aimed at investigating the murder and continuing his mother’s research. Two hundred fifty writers have also come forward to publicly criticise the lack of progress on the part of the authorities in finding all the culprits.

Shortly after the explosion, two convicted professional killers, George and Alfred Degiorgio and a third gangster known to the police were arrested. Based on numerous clues such as cell phones being monitored, surveillance films from the harbour, DNA traces on a cigarette, etc., there is no doubt they carried out the assassination, but then the investigation came to a virtual halt. The arrested killers refused to talk and those who targeted the killing remained in the dark.

Only the arrest of a man in another case of money laundering finally shed light on this case. A taxi driver, Melvin Theuma, was arrested at the country’s main airport a month ago. He had around $200,000 in his possession. Upon his arrest he offered the authorities a deal. He would make a confession in the Galizia case if given immunity. He then admitted that he had recruited the killers of Galicia on behalf of Fenech, whom he named as his boss.

Then events moved fast. Within a week Fenech was arrested. Fenech in turn accused Keith Schembri as mastermind behind the killing. Schembri then resigned and was arrested. Two other ministers, Konrad Mizzi and Chris Cardona, also handed in their notices. Finally, Muscat announced his plans to resign.

The driving force behind the series of arrests is undoubtedly the growing popular protest movement. The Maltese population has tired of living under a government that not only refuses to solve such a brutal murder, but turns out to be the mastermind behind it. The government has enriched itself since assuming office, turning the island into a paradise for tax evaders, and subjecting every sphere of public life, from the taxi licensing system to the police and the country’s power plant, to corruption.

The concerned comments now voiced in the European media and from the EU headquarters in Brussels are completely hypocritical. The Socialist Group in the EU in particular has systematically covered up for the Labour Party in the Maltese government. The heads of government gathered in the EU have relied on Malta and its head of government Muscat to implement their inhumane refugee policy in the Mediterranean.

At the same time, European companies have benefited from the lawless conditions in Malta. The German Siemens company is involved in the government’s corrupt power plant project. German DAX listed companies such as BMW, BASF and Lufthansa have also benefited from the tax haven in Malta, as the “MaltaFiles” revealed in 2017. Two years earlier, in 2015, the German federal government had awarded Muscat the Federal Cross of Merit.

The Daphne Galizia case is the second in the EU involving the cowardly murder of a journalist. In March 2018, Jan Kuciak and his fiancé were shot in Slovakia—an event that also triggered mass protests across the country and the government’s eventual resignation.

The manner in which journalist Julian Assange is treated in Britain is also significant in this respect: the major imperialist powers, the United States and the UK, are waging a merciless campaign of vengeance against the founder of WikiLeaks, who is now at risk of death in the Belmarsh maximum security prison in London. Only a mass movement of the international working class can prevent and reverse these developments.

Protests across India against new Hindu chauvinist Citizenship Act

Rohantha De Silva

Protests have erupted across India against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019 which the ruling Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rammed through parliament in just four days last week.

Dressed up as a “humanitarian” gesture, the CAA is yet another provocation initiated by the BJP and its ideological mentors in the shadowy RSS to assert that India is first and foremost a “Hindu nation”—one in which Muslims are “tolerated,” but only in so far as they accept Hindu supremacy.

The CAA extends citizenship rights to all non-Muslims—Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians–who migrated to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan before 2015.

Muslim migrants from the three countries are conspicuously excluded, and will be treated like “termites,” to use the words of Home Minister Amit Shah. Also excluded are all migrants from other countries in the region. This includes Sri Lankan Tamils and Rohingya from Myanmar, both of whom have been the targets of state persecution and communal violence.

Passage of the CAA is preparatory to the BJP realizing its plan to extend the National Register of Citizens (NRC) across India, thereby forcing all of the country’s more than 1.3 billion residents to prove to the authorities’ satisfaction that they are entitled to Indian citizenship. Muslims—who as a result of the two-pronged CAA-NRC attack will be uniquely threatened with being declared stateless and subject to internment and expulsion if they are unable to “prove” their citizenship—rightly fear that it will be used to intimidate, harass, and victimize them.

Beginning last Friday, there have been large-scale protests against the CAA in Delhi, India’s capital and largest city, and parts of West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Tamil Nadu, as well as smaller protests in states throughout the country. Today, Mamata Banerjee, West Bengal’s chief minister and the head of the rightwing Bengal regionalist Trinamool Congress, is to lead a demonstration in Kolkata against both the CAA and NRC. Meanwhile, in the southern state of Kerala, the ruling Stalinist-led Left Democratic Front and the official opposition Congress Party-led United Democratic Front are to mount a series of joint protests.

On Friday and again on Sunday, the thousands who took to the streets of Delhi to protest against the CAA were set upon by police with lathis (batons) and tear gas. Violence erupted in south Delhi yesterday, when police blocked demonstrators’ path. Police subsequently invaded the campus of Jamia Millia Islamia University (JMI), without permission, and, according to University Chief Proctor Waseem Ahmed Khan, beat up students and staff members. More than fifty protesters had to be treated, some for severe injuries, at a nearby hospital.

Delhi authorities have ordered all schools in southeast Delhi closed today. Earlier, in an attempt to defuse the situation and no doubt to curry favour with the government, the JMI administration had postponed end-of-term exams and ordered the university closed until early January.

Police also invaded the campus of Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, Utter Pradesh, Sunday evening after using tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets to disperse protesters. At least sixty students were injured. Early Friday, in response to an announcement from the Aligarh Muslim University student union that it would hold an anti-CAA protest, district authorities had shut down internet service and placed Aligarh under Section 144 of the Criminal Code, thereby criminalizing any gathering of more than four people.

There have also been large protests in Gaya and Patna, the two largest cities in the eastern Indian state of Bihar. The JD (U), which leads the Bihar state government and is a close ally of the BJP, supported passage of the CAA. But in the face of a public outcry, it is now claiming to oppose extending the NRC to Bihar.

In West Bengal, which has a large Muslim minority, there have been violent protests, expressing popular outrage over the latest BJP provocation. On Saturday, protesters blocked motorways and attacked several trains and train stations. The authorities have suspended internet services in parts or all of five districts: Howrah, which lies on the outskirts of Kolkata, Malda, Murshidabad, North 24 Parganas, and parts of South 24 Parganas.

In Chennai and other cities in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu there were also anti-CAA protests. These denounced both the law’s discriminatory exclusion of Muslims and its denial of citizenship rights to Tamils who fled the Sri Lankan state’s anti-Tamil war and its ongoing Sinhala-chauvinist policies. More than 100 protesters were detained in the city of Salem.

There have also been widespread protests in the northeast state of Assam, although these have been of an ethno-chauvinist character, attacking the CAA, for granting citizenship to Hindus born in Bangladesh and their descendants.

At a rally last Friday, Samujjal Bhattacharya, the chief adviser to the All Assam Students Union, the group that has been leading the anti-CAA agitation, denounced Modi for “betraying” his promise to “deport all illegal immigrants.” “He did not send back a single illegal Bangladeshi,” Bhattachary complained. “Instead he is now welcoming them.”

The Indian state has responded to the protests in Assam with its characteristic brutality, including using lethal force and taking more than 2,000 people into preventive detention. At least four people have died from security force bullets. A fifth person, an oil truck driver, was reportedly killed by protesters. Late Sunday, authorities announced that order had been sufficiently restored in the state capital, Guwahati, to “relax” a blanket curfew between 6am and 9pm.

The Assamese ethno-chauvinists have been able to exploit widespread anger over chronic poverty and mass joblessness. For decades, the Indian bourgeoisie and a small local elite have drained wealth from the state, which is rich in natural resources, while leaving Assam largely undeveloped.

Modi and his BJP have responded to the protests against their Hindu supremacist CAA with rabid denunciations of the opposition parties, accusing them of inciting violence and echoing India’s archrival Pakistan. Dilip Gosh, the head of the BJP’s West Bengal state unit, vowed his party would bring people into the streets to oppose “Bangladeshi Muslim violence.” “Backed by the Trinamool Congress,” ranted Gosh, “Bangladeshi infiltrator Muslims are indulging in anti-national activities in West Bengal. It’s unprecedented. What’s more shocking is that the police have not arrested anybody.”

Facing a rapidly deteriorating economic situation and growing popular opposition, especially from the working class, the Modi government is pressing forward with its drive to transform India into a Hindu rasthra or state. It aims to mobilize its Hindu supremacist base as shock troops and use communalism to divert mounting social anger and frustration into reactionary channels, so as to intimidate and split the masses.

The Indian bourgeoisie rallied behind the BJP after the Indian economy faltered at the beginning of the decade, making the BJP under Modi its premier national party, with a share of power in a majority of states as well as control of the national government and presidency. Whilst some sections now wring their hands over the BJP’s implementation of its longstanding Hindutva program, fearing Modi may soon reap a whirlwind, big business still clings to the Hindu “strongman,” calculating that he is the best bet to assert its predatory interests on the world stage and push through social incendiary pro-investor “reforms.”

Last week’s enactment of the CAA has disrupted the Modi government’s diplomatic calendar. Because of the open anti-Muslim and anti-Bangladeshi thrust of the CAB and NRC, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abdul Momen and Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan were forced to cancel their respective visits to India last Thursday and Friday.

But so as not to antagonize India and jeopardize New Delhi’s political support and investments, they did not mention the CAA as the reason their visits have been put off.

Modi was scheduled to hold an annual summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Guwahati over the past weekend, but it could not be held due to the ongoing anti-CAA protests. India had wanted to transfer the summit to another location, but Japan declined. It wanted to use the summit to highlight its investments in northeast India, a strategic region bordering China to the north, and which New Delhi and Tokyo are intent on making the linchpin of dramatically enhanced trade between India and southeast Asia.

The Modi government’s CAA and plans to initiate a national NRC underscore the artificial and thoroughly reactionary character of the 1947 communal partition of the Indian subcontinent. With the support of the Indian National Congress and Muslim League, South Asia’s departing British imperialist rulers, divided it into an expressly Muslim Pakistan and a largely Hindu India in defiance of history, culture and economic logic.

The immediate impact of Partition was mass communal violence that left more than a million dead and uprooted close to 20 million from their homes. But more than that, it created a reactionary communal state system that has served as a means for imperialism to continue to dominate the region; given rise to reactionary inter-state rivalries that have led to numerous wars and wars crises and today threaten the region with a conflict fought with nuclear weapons between India and Pakistan; and has been used by South Asia’s reactionary ruling elites to incite communalism and divide the masses.

The only way forward out of the social misery and reactionary cauldron of state, communal and caste divisions created by imperialism and the region’s rival bourgeois elites is to unite the working class across the Indian subcontinent on an international socialist program.

Aung San Suu Kyi defends Myanmar military’s crimes

Peter Symonds

Aung San Suu Kyi, de facto head of the government in Myanmar [Burma], appeared in the International Court of Justice in The Hague last week as a crass apologist for the country’s military against charges of gross human rights abuses, including genocide, against the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority.

Since 2017, the military in Myanmar has engaged in brutal operations to terrorise the Rohingya population forcing hundreds of thousands to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh where they live in squalid refugee camps.

A UN fact-finding mission last year found that military forces had destroyed almost 400 villages and driven close to three quarters of a million Rohingya out of their homes. It stated that the estimated death toll of 10,000 was “conservative” and called for the indictment of six senior generals, including Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief of the army, on charges of genocide.

Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi addresses judges of the International Court of Justice for the second day of three days of hearings in The Hague, Netherlands, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2019. Aung San Suu Kyi will represent Myanmar in a case filed by Gambia at the ICJ, the United Nations' highest court, accusing Myanmar of genocide in its campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

Suu Kyi, who was touted by the US and its allies as “an icon of democracy” and given a Nobel Peace Prize, dismissed the charge of genocide and accused Gambia, which brought the charges before the court, of presenting an “incomplete and misleading factual picture of the situation.” The Gambian case is being backed by the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, as well as Canada and the Netherlands.

Suu Kyi claimed that the exodus of Rohingya from north-western state of Rakhine was simply the result of the conflict between the military and armed Rohingya separatist groups, not a conscious policy of ethnic cleansing by the military. While acknowledging that individual members and units of the military might have carried out crimes, she insisted that these would be dealt with by the country’s military courts and, in any case, did not constitute genocide.

The attempt to blame Rohingya militants for the turmoil has been the standard pretext used by the military to defend its crimes. The UN fact-finding mission last year dismissed the excuse, noting that the army incursions into Rakhine had been planned at the highest levels of the military prior to small-scale rebel actions in August 2017. It also noted the coordinated character of the military operations, which has involved the round-up of men and boys, the sexual abuse of women and the torching of entire villages.

Suu Kyi also ignored the systematic denial of basic democratic rights, including citizenship, to the Rohingya, who are treated as “illegal immigrants” despite have lived in Myanmar for decades or longer. Her government has done nothing to address the issue and leading members of her party, the National League for Democracy, are deeply imbued with Buddhist supremacism and hostile to the Muslim minority.

Suu Kyi also claimed that it was “still not easy to establish clear patterns of events.” Her claim of ignorance is simply not believable. She and the military have sought to block journalists and human rights activists from entering Rakhine state to gather firsthand evidence. Nevertheless, satellite imagery, along with eyewitness accounts from refugees who have fled Myanmar, all corroborate allegations of systematic human rights abuses.

Suu Kyi’s told the court: “Can there be genocidal intent on the part of a state that actively investigates, prosecutes and punishes soldiers and officers who are accused of wrongdoing?” However, her evidence that soldiers and officers have been prosecuted and found guilty of human rights abuses is flawed.

She cited in particular the conviction of seven soldiers for summarily executing 10 Rohingya men in the village of Inn Din in 2017. However, as the Financial Times explained: “She did not mention that the killings only came to light because they were exposed by two Reuters reporters who were then arrested for allegedly obtaining state secrets and jailed for more than 16 months—longer than the soldiers responsible for the massacre.”

Much of the coverage of Suu Kyi’s court appearance reeks of rank hypocrisy. Many of the organisations, governments and so-called human rights organisations that are now condemning her, were, up until quite recently, hailing her as a courageous defender of democratic rights. Their promotion of Suu Kyi, as well as their about-face, is bound up with geo-politics, in particular Washington’s aggressive confrontation with China, rather than concerns about democracy in Myanmar.

Suu Kyi and her NLD represented layers of the ruling class who regarded the military’s domination, including over important sections of the economy, as a barrier to their interests and looked to the West for support. Suu Kyi backed tough sanctions by the US and Europe in the aftermath of brutal military crackdown on mass protests and strikes in 1988 as a means to force concessions from the junta.

US pressure on the military regime intensified under the Obama administration as it sought to undermine China throughout the region as part of its “pivot to Asia.” In the case of Myanmar, Washington was determined to force the military to shift the focus of foreign policy from China to the US. Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest and the holding of closely controlled elections that elevated her to de-facto head of government were bound up with a reorientation towards Washington.

The military, however, remains in control of key ministries, including defence and home affairs, and can effectively veto legislation as a quarter of parliamentary seats are appointed by the armed forces. Suu Kyi has provided the threadbare façade of democracy and acted as the roving ambassador for the military-dominated regime, at the time touting for foreign investment.

The failure of Myanmar to attract significant foreign investment, along with growing international criticism of the treatment of the Rohingya, has compelled Suu Kyi, her government and the military to increasingly turn back to Beijing for financial and diplomatic assistance. In 2017, for instance, China used its veto to block a UN Security Council statement expressing concern about the treatment of the Rohingya.

Just prior to her departure for The Hague, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi visited Myanmar and met with Suu Kyi in what was obviously a show of support in the case in the International Court of Justice. Wang urged her government to press ahead with infrastructure projects under the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, which is part of Beijing’s massive Belt and Road Initiative aimed to linking the Eurasian landmass and countering US efforts to encircle China militarily.

The closer relations between Myanmar and China are behind the international campaign to once again put pressure on the regime to toe Washington’s line. If Suu Kyi and the generals do not heed the warning, Myanmar could once again be branded as a “rogue state” and subjected to economic sanctions on the basis of human rights abuses.

After three days of hearings, the International Court of Justice last Saturday authorised the prosecutor to proceed with investigations into alleged crimes against Rohingya people from Myanmar. It declared that there existed “a reasonable basis to believe widespread and/or systematic acts of violence may have been committed that could qualify as the crimes against humanity.”

New WikiLeaks documents expose phony claims of 2018 Syria chemical weapons attack

Niles Niemuth

Documents published by WikiLeaks on Saturday confirm that there is significant dissent within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the global chemical weapons watchdog, over the doctoring of a public report on the alleged April 7, 2018 chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, which reportedly killed 49 people and wounded as many as 650.

The latest round of revelations makes clear that the US-led regime-change operation in Syria, which began in 2011, has been based on a pack of lies. The role of WikiLeaks in exposing these lies demonstrates why the US government has been pursuing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange so ferociously, along with Washington's partners in crime such as Britain and Australia.

Relying on video that showed alleged victims of the attack in a hospital gasping for air and foaming at the mouth, the Trump administration and its European allies launched missile strikes against Syria just one week later. The US-led attack was an act of war that threatened to spark a wider conflict with Russia and Iran, both of which have military forces deployed in the country to back the Assad government in the eight-year regime-change war fueled by the CIA.

While the Trump administration made no effort to seek independent confirmation of the allegations against Assad before taking military action, the OPCW report and the organization’s supposedly objective stance were used to justify the assault months after the fact.

The U.S. launched an attack on Damascus, Syria on April 14, 2018. U.S. President Donald Trump announced airstrikes in retaliation for the country's alleged use of chemical weapons. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

However, a series of internal OPCW files published by WikiLeaks, and reporting by columnist Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail, show that serious concerns have been raised by members of the OPCW Fact Finding Mission (FFM) to Douma about evidence that was excluded from the final report in order to implicate Assad.

Relying on Islamist terrorist groups as “moderate rebel” proxies, including Al Qaeda and its affiliates, the US and its European allies have overseen a war that has resulted in the deaths of 570,000 people and displaced more than 12 million. The years of carnage have been aimed at overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and installing a pliant Western puppet regime in order to neutralize the influence of Iran and Russia in the oil-rich Middle East. Claims of chemical weapons attacks and the use of “barrel bombs” by Syria’s military have been repeatedly used throughout the war in an effort to justify Western military action and call for the removal of Assad.

A memo sent to Fernando Arias, the director-general of the OPCW, on March 14, 2019 by a member of the FFM who had been sent to Douma to analyze the ballistics of two cylinders which were the purported source of the toxic gas, noted that there were about 20 inspectors who had expressed concerns over the final report published at the beginning of that month.

The author of the memo notes that members of the FFM felt that the report “did not reflect the views of the team members that deployed to Douma,” and that only one OPCW inspector who had been in Syria, a paramedic, was ultimately involved in the production of the final report. He notes that his investigation into the provenance of the cylinders, one which was found lying on a bed and another on an apartment rooftop, was excluded from the final report released in March.

WikiLeaks also published the first draft of the interim FFM report, which noted that the investigators were “unable to provide satisfactory explanations for the relatively moderate damage to the cylinders allegedly dropped from an unknown height, compared to the destruction caused to the rebar-reinforced roofs.” This fact--that the evidence did not point to the cylinders being dropped from Assad’s aircraft--was excluded from the final report.

An email exchange with the FFM’s team leader, Sami Barrek, from July 2018 showed that concerns had been raised by an investigator over the exclusion from the final report of the fact that only low levels of chlorinated organic chemicals (COCs) had been recovered at the scene, and that no determination had been made on how the cylinders arrived at the locations where they had been discovered. Despite repeated interventions by investigators, the level of COCs was excluded from the final report, allowing for the inference that a chlorine gas attack had been confirmed.

Another email sent by a dissenting investigator to OPCW Director of Strategy and Policy Veronika Stromsíková on May 20 raised concerns over the organization’s false declaration that veteran OPCW inspector and ballistics expert Ian Henderson, who had produced an engineering assessment, was not part of the FFM in Douma. The claim came after his report casting doubt on the possibility of the cylinders being dropped from the air was leaked to the press. Henderson had found, after inspecting the cylinders, that there was a “higher probability that both cylinders were manually placed… rather than being delivered from aircraft.”

As Hitchens notes in his reporting, the final redacted OPCW report omitted reservations raised by FFM investigators that the evidence they uncovered did not comport with the video of the alleged victims foaming at the mouth, a symptom consistent with a sarin gas attack and not chlorine.

Hitchens writes: “The inconsistency between the presence of a putative, chlorine-containing choking or blood agent on the one hand and the testimonies of alleged witnesses and symptoms observed from video footage and photographs, on the other, cannot be rationalised.” No evidence was found to indicate that sarin gas was used in Douma.

This photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows medical staff treating a boy following a suspected chemical attack on his town of al-Khalidiya, in Aleppo, Syria, Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018. Some 50 civilians were being treated following a suspected poison gas attack by Syrian rebel groups on the government-held Aleppo city in the country's north, according to Syrian state media. (SANA via AP)

The latest round of leaks comes amid an effective media blackout of the publication at the end of November of an email written by a member of the OPCW fact-finding mission in Syria raising “grave concern” about the final redacted report. Those who have reported on the leaks and raised questions about the official narrative about the Douma attack have been smeared as Russian stooges or Assad apologists.

OPCW chief Fernando Arias confirmed that the email is legitimate, but stood by the final report during the organization’s annual conference in The Hague last month. “While some of these diverging views continue to circulate in certain public discussion forums, I would like to reiterate that I stand by the independent, professional conclusions,” Arais declared.

Last week, British-based Newsweek journalist Tareq Haddad resigned in protest after the magazine’s editors refused to publish his report on the OPCW leaks. After Haddad announced on Twitter his reasons for leaving the publication, a Newsweek spokesperson anonymously smeared the reporter, telling Fox News that he had “pitched a conspiracy theory rather than an idea for objective reporting.”

Despite the best efforts of the editors at Newsweek and the rest of the mainstream media to suppress any reporting, the continued revelations about the OPCW report make clear that there are very real grounds for journalists to raise concerns over the official line on the incident in Douma, which was very nearly used to trigger a third world war.