Crypto AG leaks: German and American spy agencies snooped on 120 countries

Gregor Link

At the beginning of February, the Washington Post and the German broadcaster ZDF reported on an espionage operation of enormous dimensions: Under the code names “Rubicon” and “Minerva,” Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) together with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had monitored the encrypted government communications of almost half the countries on earth for decades.

This is proven by leaked CIA documents made available to the Washington Post, ZDF and Swiss broadcaster SRF. According to these documents, governments all over the world paid billions for encryption systems from Crypto AG, a Swiss company that was fully owned by the two secret services by 1970 at the latest, enabling them to break the encryption at any time.

The World Socialist Web Site wrote in early February about the so-called Crypto leaks: “That US intelligence, in collaboration with its imperialist partners, was spying on the diplomatic communications of governments around the world for the past half-century is a significant revelation. While not surprising, it demonstrates in the most concrete manner the blatant criminality and gangsterism of US imperialism.”

Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst)

The leaks comprise around 280 pages written by leading BND and CIA employees, including a detailed chronology of the espionage operation. The governments monitored by Germany and the US include Saudi Arabia, Iran, Argentina, Panama, and the Vatican, as well as allies such as Italy, Austria, Spain, and Portugal. The CIA internal report speaks of the “secret service coup of the century.”

In total, more than 120 countries used Crypto AG encryption technology between the 1950s and 2000s. The company’s founder, Boris Hagelin, granted the CIA exclusive access to its technology in the aftermath of the Second World War. At the end of the 1960s, a Franco-German takeover attempt initially failed due to these relations. But under the Social Democrat/Free Democrat (SPD-FDP) government of Chancellor Willy Brandt, the BND and the CIA finally bought the company secretly in 1970. From then on, the entire profits from company sales illegally flowed into the black accounts of the secret services, where it served to finance other covert projects.

The Rubicon revelations provide insight into decisive turning points of the Cold War and the subsequent NATO campaigns in the Middle East. For example, the BND was informed early on about the coup preparations against Chile’s social democratic president, Salvador Allende. After the 1973 coup supported by the CIA, both great powers had access to the secrets of General Pinochet’s bloody military dictatorship.

In the Falklands/Malvinas War between Argentina and Britain, Germany and the US supplied the British side with intercepted radio messages from their opponent, but remained silent about the crimes of the Argentine military junta, which terrorised the population between 1976 and 1983. As reported by ZDF, radio reconnaissance was the decisive factor in Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s decision to sink the Argentinean cruiser Belgrano, costing the lives of more than 300.

During the Israeli-Egyptian peace talks at Camp David in 1987, the United States monitored communications between President Anwar Sadat and his government in Cairo. Libya was also continuously monitored. When a bomb explosion in a Berlin discotheque in 1986 killed three people and injured 200 more, US President Ronald Reagan—based on “evidence” from the secret services—immediately accused the Libyan regime of the attack. A week later, this served the US government as a pretext for bombing the cities of Benghazi and Tripoli. According to the Rubicon documents, the BND played “an essential role” in this case.

Although the main suspicions against Crypto AG have been known among experts for many years, the new details of Operation Rubicon highlight the modus operandi of the imperialist powers. Its smooth running over several decades was the result of an international conspiracy at the highest levels of government. In addition to the heads of the BND and CIA, who report directly to the Federal Chancellery and the White House, respectively, the information known to date also points to confidants in Luxembourg and Switzerland, as well as Sweden, Israel and the member states of the so-called “Five Eyes” espionage alliance (US, Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand).

As reported in the Luzerner Zeitung, the takeover of Crypto AG was carried out by the law firm Marxer und Partner from Liechtenstein. Considered to be the unofficial “Ministry of Justice” of the Principality, the firm was already involved in the founding of the company in 1952. It acted as a trustee for the BND and CIA, and, with the help of asset-holding foundations and offshore shell companies, concealed the true owners of the public limited company. In 1993, the same firm finally handled the sale of the BND’s shares in the company to the CIA and transferred the money to black accounts of the German secret service.

However, the BND’s “exit” from Crypto AG did not mean a weakening of its ambitions or its possibilities. On the contrary, at that time, the company was simply no longer profitable due to the emerging digital competition. Moreover, the fact that the electronics company Siemens, in return for a share of the profits and at the behest of the BND, has provided all the managing directors of Crypto AG since 1970, points to a possible covert technology transfer.

Operation Rubicon exposes the criminality with which German and American imperialism pursued their interests during and after the Cold War. This has not changed since, as the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden have shown. Germany’s return to aggressive great power politics will inevitably be accompanied by new crimes that will put operations like Rubicon far in the shade.

For example, the government-affiliated Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (German Institute for International and Security Affairs) describes the mass covert spying on over a hundred governments as “one of the most successful espionage operations of the Cold War.” The secret installation of “back doors” in encryption technologies was “no surprise,” but no longer represented a modern strategy. Regarding Western preparations for war against China, it added, it was also “not possible to credibly warn of Chinese backdoors in mobile communications technology and at the same time install them yourself.”

This line can now be found almost word for word in comments in the bourgeois press. Typical is an article by Tagesspiegel editor Frank Jansen. The operation, he writes admiringly, was a “brilliant coup” and “the present amazement about ‘Rubicon’” revealed widespread naivety. “In the confrontation with secret services of authoritarian regimes,” states “cannot be vigilant enough.” The Chinese technology company Huawei, for example, was “a risk factor” and belonged “to the fabric of the communist dictatorship, in which secret services play a major role.”

In reality, it is the BND, NSA and CIA who play this “role.” For decades, they have all been monitoring the population of the entire planet and, in the case of the BND, spying on foreign journalists, civil rights activists and oppositionists. International journalists’ associations have filed a complaint against this surveillance with the Federal Constitutional Court. During the court hearing in January, an editorial in Die Welt blatantly demanded that, in the interests of Germany, the BND not be placed in legal “fetters.”

Just like the Verfassungsschutz (secret service) and Military Counter-Intelligence Service (MAD), the German Foreign Intelligence Service has been systematically beefed up for years and given extensive new powers. The new BND headquarters in Berlin, the largest of its kind in Europe, is only the most striking symbol of these efforts.

Coronavirus overwhelms mitigation measures across Latin America

Andrea Lobo

Since the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) was first detected regionally in Brazil two weeks ago, confirmed cases in Latin America and the Caribbean have now exceeded 300 and reached most countries. Three patients, one in Panama, another in Argentina and a third in Guyana, have died.

Despite having nearly two months to prepare for the inevitable arrival of the virus, the governments and ruling classes of Latin American failed to organize any significant response. Travel bans and controls at the ports of entry proved ineffective, with infected travelers being detected days and even weeks after arrival. Now, as countries shift toward mitigation efforts, these are characterized by disorderly quarantines of suspected cases, gradual suspension of classes, and the cancellation of large gatherings.

The late and deficient response in the region is being overwhelmed because it is guided by efforts to cover up, not address, the inequalities in access to testing and health care.

Latin America’s rampant poverty and social inequality make it especially vulnerable to the spread and impact of the Covid-19 virus. If anything, recent years have only seen the region become more prone to epidemics, as shown by 2019’s Dengue outbreak, the worst in history, with over 3 million cases and an uptick this year.

Nahid Bhadelia, a Boston University specialist on outbreaks in Africa, Asia and Latin America, wrote in the Atlantic that the ease of transmission of the Covid-19 “will exacerbate some of the greatest weaknesses of crowded low-resource health care facilities, including their inability to quickly identify and isolate patients who may have early symptoms resembling those of other common diseases.”

The public health calamity looming over the region and its economic impact are already making regional currencies and stock markets drop by an order of magnitude. Brazil’s main stock market, Ibovespa, has lost nearly a quarter of its value over the course of this week, with trading halted twice because of the speed of the sell-off.

The country has confirmed at least 100 coronavirus cases, among the most recent being Fabio Wajngarten, the communications director for Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro, who is also being tested and is under isolation and medical observation. Both of them recently returned from a five-day trip to the US, where they met with US President Donald Trump at his Florida resort.

Bolsonaro's communications director Fabio Wajngarten (r.) with Trump in Florida.

The devastating economic impact of the pandemic and its laying bare of Latin America’s yawning social inequality can only lead to an intensification of the class struggle. This follows the mass strikes and protests last year in Puerto Rico, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras, Bolivia, Haiti and Brazil.

The most frequent (and panicked) statements by officials and the corporate press have been calls on the population not to panic. Capturing these fears succinctly, America’s Quarterly, published by the think-tank Americas Society/Council of the Americas, wrote: “What if everybody’s Instagram starts to fill up with long lines and patients suffering (or worse) in the hallways of the region’s already overwhelmed public hospitals—while the rich get decent treatment in private clinics?”

While the journal adds that “this contrast in treatment could become political dynamite,” the situation is even more explosive under conditions in which the privatization of health care and gutting of public facilities have forced large sections of the working class to incur debt in order to access private clinics and laboratories. It takes months to get appointments for tests, consultations and even surgeries in public hospitals, while informal workers are not covered by state insurance. A 2019 study published in the Lancet found that 42.7 percent of health care expenditures in Latin America constitute out-of-pocket costs.

The ruling class and imperialism responded to the social upheavals last year by pushing the region to the brink of open dictatorship, including the killing of hundreds of protesters by the Chilean, Ecuadorian, Colombian and Bolivian militaries.

The global economic impact of the coronavirus, moreover, coincides with Latin America’s worst economic period in seven decades, largely due to the slowdown in China, now severely exacerbated by the pandemic. As China became South America’s number-one trading partner, and the region became China’s second-largest destination for Foreign Direct Investment, the phrase “When China sneezes, Latin America catches a cold” won currency. It has now become a chilling warning.

In this context, the ruling oligarchies will be even more reluctant to dedicate the necessary resources for the containment and treatment of Covid-19 and for compensating workers for lost income. Instead, they are moving to crush all signs of popular protest. This has so far been signaled by the decision of the far-right Guatemalan government to impose a state of emergency, which militarizes public services like hospitals and schools and bans all demonstrations, even before any confirmed cases in the country.

Inequalities between countries are significant, with the Pan American Health Organization (OPS) sending teams of experts to aid the “weakest health care systems”—Haiti, Venezuela, Surinam, Guyana, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Bolivia and Paraguay. But the reality is that no health system in the region is prepared to manage a full-blown epidemic. All regional elites are notorious for their negligence in the face of frequent and predictable natural disasters and epidemics.

While rural and indigenous communities are deprived of even basic medical services, the explosive and disorganized urbanization of the entire region in recent decades has been met with social austerity and privatizations.

Public health systems have been a primary victim of social austerity to pay back financial vultures. As a condition for granting a $56 billion loan to Argentina in 2018, the International Monetary Fund demanded a 70 percent cut in the budget for prevention of infectious diseases.

The “left” president Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, where 12 coronavirus cases have been confirmed, has already warned that his government’s response to the Covid-19 will be “slow.” After carrying out massive cuts to health care, including a 30 percent personnel reduction in the Health Ministry, López Obrador still declared: “We may have the budget, but it’s not executed because the government was not built to attend to the needs of the people.”

On the other hand, according to a recent estimate by El País, Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, which have 1.1 million doctors, could collectively hire 2.2 million more if they eliminated tax benefits for corporations.

Poor social infrastructure is also manifested in the water rationing in major cities and rural towns in Honduras, Peru, Venezuela and Costa Rica, affecting some hospitals without tanks. With the overnight depletion and overpricing of hand sanitizer, hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants have been left with absolutely no way to protect themselves from the deadly virus. Protesters in working class suburbs in Honduras and Costa Rica have responded this week with roadblocks.

OPS chief Carissa Etienne told a press conference last Friday that the whole region should expect these scenarios: initial outbreak centers, major propagations in closed quarters like prisons, refugee camps and barracks, and a massive community transmission, exacerbated by the flu/rainy season beginning in April in the tropics.

According to the most recent World Bank data, Latin America and the Caribbean have an average of 2.2 hospital beds per 1,000 people, ranging from 0.6 for Guatemala to 5.2 in Cuba.

Any effective response would need to be internationally coordinated to share resources and streamline the production and distribution of medical equipment, tests and vaccines. However, the crisis will only exacerbate the national competition between ruling elites to attract investments, including into the crisis-ridden pension systems, with much to gain from a virus that could wipe out the sick and elderly.

While Latin America’s ruling elites aim to unload the costs of the epidemic onto the backs of the working class, the International Committee of the Fourth International is calling on workers to counter with their own independent response, forming rank-and-file committees in workplaces and neighborhoods to ensure that all of society’s resources are mustered to actually mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 on the entire population on the basis of social needs, not private profit.

Major US professional sport leagues shut down seasons

Alan Gilman

All major US professional sports leagues halted games and then suspended their seasons Thursday after the nightmare scenario—a top athlete testing positive for coronavirus—came to fruition on Wednesday night. Utah Jazz all-star center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the coronavirus, the game he had been scheduled to play was postponed, and within hours the National Basketball Association announced it was suspending its season.

After the game was postponed, members of both the Utah Jazz and the Oklahoma City Thunder, as well as some media members, were waiting to be tested for the coronavirus and the Jazz were quarantined in Oklahoma City. By Thursday morning it was announced that Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell had also tested positive.

Players from teams who played against the Jazz in recent days, including the Toronto Raptors, Detroit Pistons, Boston Celtics, New York Knicks, and Cleveland Cavaliers, were told to self-quarantine. In addition it will be necessary to test and potentially quarantine the teams recently played by the Jazz’s opponents, as well as the dozen or so referees who had worked Jazz games over the past two weeks, as well as those other teams whose games they had officiated.

By Thursday, in the immediate aftermath of the NBA’s shutdown, all other major US sport leagues and organizations belatedly announced their response to the pandemic:

• Major League Baseball (MLB) will suspend spring training games and delay the start of the regular season by at least two weeks.

• The National Hockey League (NHL) will “pause” its season.

• National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) will hold its next two races without fans in attendance.

• The Professional Golfers Association (PGA) tours will continue to be played but without fans present.

• In college basketball the Big 10, ACC, SEC, Big 12, American Athletic Conference, Pac-12 and Atlantic 10 all canceled their men’s basketball conference tournaments.

• The NCAA announced Wednesday that the Men’s (March Madness) and Women’s national basketball tournaments would be played without fans. On Thursday both tournaments were cancelled.

• The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) tour has suspended tournaments for six weeks.

• Major League Soccer (MLS) has suspended all games.

The US professional sports leagues had been a glaring exception in a world where most countries had either cancelled professional sporting events since the beginning of March or were staging the games without fans.

Throughout China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore, all such events had been cancelled or postponed. In Europe, Italy had banned all sporting events, and most other European countries had either cancelled or postponed their events or mandated that they take place without fans in attendance.

Professional sports in the US is a multibillion-dollar business whose revenue is generated by broadcast rights, attendance, and merchandising. The billionaire owners and the media conglomerates that broadcast these games have deemed their financial health to be paramount over the health of players, fans, and the public at large, by insisting that its business continue as usual.

In Seattle March 7, in the area that was the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the US, the Seattle Sounders, a professional soccer team, played before 33,000 fans at Seattle CenturyLink Field. On Thursday, March 5, two days before the game, Seattle health officials had reported there had been a total of 51 cases of coronavirus and 10 deaths in the area. Moreover, a part-time employee, who had worked as a concession vendor at the same stadium during the Seattle Dragons professional football team’s home game against the Dallas Renegades on February 22, had tested positive for the coronavirus.

A National Hockey League (NHL) hockey game was also played last Thursday in San Jose, California under similar circumstances. Just hours after Santa Clara County public health officials recommended that large gatherings like sporting events be cancelled in light of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak that had then included six new cases, bringing the total to 20 in the area, the San Jose Sharks played their game against the Minnesota Wild with 14,500 fans attending, 2,000 below the season average.

In the NBA, the Golden State Warriors, playing in San Francisco’s Chase Center, said in a statement last Friday that their Saturday game, broadcast nationally on ABC, “will continue as scheduled.” But the team advised fans who are feeling under the weather to not attend.

“Any guest who is feeling sick, regardless of their symptoms, should not attend public events. In addition, the Warriors are also encouraging vulnerable populations, including persons with underlying health conditions, not to attend tomorrow night’s Warriors game at Chase Center,” the statement read. A capacity crowd of over 18,000 fans attended the game.

On Sunday the NBA played 10 games that were attended by approximately 180,000 fans, all in indoor arenas.

In college basketball the primary concern was the upcoming NCAA tournament commonly referred to as “March Madness,” set to begin March 17. It is the NCAA’s most important moneymaker, generating about $1 billion in television and marketing rights.

The first cancellation of a major US sporting event was announced Sunday: the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament that was scheduled to begin the next day in Indian Wells, California. It was called after a case of the coronavirus was confirmed in the nearby Coachella Valley in Southern California.

One of tennis’s major tournaments, the BNP Paribas Open typically draws upward of 450,000 spectators. This year’s field was expected to attract tennis’s most prominent players, including Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka and Coco Gauff, with prize money of $17 million.

The Riverside County Public Health Department declared a public health emergency Sunday for desert cities 110 miles east of Los Angeles, including Indian Wells. “There is too great a risk, at this time, to the public health of the Riverside County area in holding a large gathering of this size,” Dr. David Agus, professor of medicine and biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California, said in a statement.

On Monday recognizing that the magnitude of the severity of the health crisis could no longer be concealed, the NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer announced in a joint statement that they were closing access to locker rooms and clubhouses to all nonessential personnel, including media, in response to the coronavirus crisis. Moreover, players had been instructed not to shake hands, sign autographs, and to avoid other forms of physical contact with fans.

This stopgap measure collapsed, however, after the revelation that Rudy Gobert had become the first professional athlete in the United States known to have contracted the coronavirus.

Stock markets plunge in biggest fall since October 1987 crash

Nick Beams

Stock markets around the world yesterday experienced their worst day since the crash of October 1987, as prices plunged and clear indications emerged of a deepening crisis throughout the entire financial system.

The global sell-off began in the US futures market and during trading in the Asia-Pacific region as US President Donald Trump was delivering his address to the nation on Wednesday evening. Trump advanced no emergency measures to counter the coronavirus spread, but instead announced an economically damaging 30-day travel ban on Europe.

The market collapse then spread to Europe, where stocks had their worst day in decades. Market indexes in France and Germany fell by around 10 percent, with banks the hardest hit. The Euro Stoxx Bank Index fell 16 percent for the day, taking its total loss for the year to around 42 percent.

Wall Street opened sharply down, triggering a 15-minute halt in trading for the second time this week. The fall continued throughout the day, with the Dow losing 2,352 points, or 10 percent. The S&P 500 dropped 9.5 percent and the Nasdaq lost 9.4 percent.

A stockbroker on Wall St. (AP Photo)

The stock market plunge is now generating a crisis in the entire financial system. In a report issued yesterday, the Bank of America (BofA) said financial markets were being “overwhelmed by liquidity concerns” and this could “stop the Treasury market from functioning.” It concluded: “If that happens, it is a national security issue.”

The US Treasury market, the bank noted, is the bedrock for all other financial markets. If it experienced large-scale illiquidity other markets would not “be able to price effectively.” That is, they would virtually cease to function.

The BofA said all asset classes, including stocks, corporate debt and mortgage-backed securities, were vulnerable. One portfolio manager at a large asset management firm told the Financial Times: “We’re not trading.”

A mortgage banker told the Wall Street Journal: “Our market is now completely closed. There is no offer to buy any agency mortgage product of any type.”

The US Federal Reserve has intervened saying it will pump at least $1.5 trillion into short-term money markets. A statement by the New York Fed, which conducts the central bank’s money market operations, said: “These changes are being made to address highly unusual disruptions in Treasury financing markets associated with the coronavirus outbreak.”

The Fed’s intervention, as in the global financial crisis of 2008, underscores the basic class response of the state and its financial authorities. While nothing is being done to address the mounting health disaster facing millions of people, all stops are being pulled out to assist Wall Street and finance capital.

But in the absence of any meaningful measures to address the underlying crisis, financial measures aimed at bolstering the markets are having the opposite effect.

If Trump’s address was, as one commentator noted, the “most expensive speech in history,” yesterday’s remarks by the European Central Bank (ECB) president, Christine Lagarde, were almost as disastrous.

The ECB announced it would expand its quantitative easing program with an additional €120 billion of bond purchases by the end of the year, on top of its existing purchases of €20 billion a month, and it would make borrowing conditions easier for banks.

But remarks by Lagarde announcing the new measures set off a storm under conditions where the differences between the yields on bonds issued by countries in the eurozone are widening.

“We are not here to close spreads, this is not the function or the mission of the ECB,” she said. “There are other tools for that and other actors to deal with those issues.”

The reference to “other actors” reflects Lagarde’s insistence that, having already lowered interest rates to negative levels and resumed its quantitative easing program, there is little more the ECB can do.

She said it was not her intention to emulate her predecessor Mario Draghi and do “whatever it takes, number two.” This was a reference to the famous remark by Draghi in 2012 in the midst of the eurozone debt crisis that led to a fall in the yields on Spanish and Italian bonds.

In the past weeks, Lagarde has been insisting that European governments step up spending to meet the coronavirus crisis. She repeated this at her press conference, asserting that the response had to be “fiscal first and foremost.”

However, she has run into opposition from the governments of the Netherlands and Germany, which regard increased spending measures as a form of bailout for weaker economies in the eurozone, particularly Italy.

Lagarde’s remarks sparked outrage in Italy because they raised concerns that, as the economy moves into recession as a result of coronavirus and the lockdown of the country, its ability to finance its debts will be impaired.

Following Lagarde’s speech, Italian sovereign bond prices fell by a record amount, widening the gap in the yield between Italian and German bonds that is regarded as an indicator of Italian sovereign debt risk.

For the first time in the history of the ECB, Lagarde was forced to make a statement correcting her remarks. In a television interview she said she was “fully committed to avoid any fragmentation in a difficult moment for the euro area.”

While the US stock market and financial system is the eye of the storm, the tightening of liquidity in its markets threatens to rapidly travel around the world, as the US dollar is the basis of the global trading and financial system.

In an analysis issued earlier this month, Credit Suisse warned of big dislocations in demand for dollar funding.

It said its main concern was about “missed payments for dollars globally” as this could have a cascading effect that severely impacts on individual banks and regional banking systems.

There have been calls for a revival of so-called “dollar swap lines,” in which the US Fed makes money available to other central banks. Though these measures were little reported on at the time, they played a central role in preventing a complete meltdown of the global financial system in 2008.

But with the rise of “America First” nationalism in the US, personified by Trump, there are doubts over whether such measures can be repeated. In his address, Trump said nothing about addressing the coronavirus outbreak as a global problem that requires a global solution.

Rather, he said it was a “foreign virus” that had “started in China” and denounced the European Union for failing to take action, resulting in outbreaks in the US being “seeded” by travellers from Europe.

There is a more than a symbolic significance to the fact that yesterday’s market meltdown was the largest since the crash of October 1987. When the Fed intervened in that crisis, opening the money spigot to prop up the markets, it initiated a policy that has prevailed over the past three decades.

This has involved the siphoning of wealth to the upper echelons of society by the creation of ever larger and more dangerous financial bubbles, at the expense of the social conditions of the working class.

The coronavirus outbreak and the response of the ruling elites has exposed, in the living experience of billions of people the world, the malignancy that lies at the heart of the profit system.

US authorities in disarray and paralysis in face of Covid-19 emergency

Benjamin Mateus

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases around the globe has risen to 135,000, with sharp increases reported in major European countries and the United States. The death toll will soon pass 5,000. Health experts internationally are warning that unless urgent measures are taken, mass infections could take place and the virus could claim millions of lives. Italy has now reported over 15,000 infections and over 1,000 deaths—a shocking fatality rate of over 6 percent, nearly triple the rate registered in China where the viral outbreak began last December.

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) formally classified the COVID-19 epidemic as a global pandemic. They explained, in the most succinct terms, that their rationale for the assessment stemmed from their frustration that national governments had demonstrated a lack of resolve to muster the necessary resources to prevent the spread of the virus. Their exasperation was present in their voices and demeanor as they attempted to convey to reporters the dire consequences of this inaction.

WHO officials stated, “without naming names,” that government officials were not taking basic steps to stem the viral outbreak, despite the contrasting experiences of China, South Korea, Iran and Italy demonstrating the necessity for widespread testing and quarantining.

The belated actions taken by the Chinese government on January 23 to effectively lock down the epicenter of infections in Hubei province halted community transmission of the virus over the following month. The number of new cases has now fallen to just a few per day, with overall infections in China peaking at just over 80,900, with 3,172 recorded deaths. The majority of new cases being reported are people who contracted COVID-19 outside China.

A worker from a Servpro disaster recovery team wearing a protective suit and respirator peers out a window as he waits to exit the Life Care Center in Kirkland, Wash. for a break from cleaning the facility, Wednesday, March 11, 2020. The nursing home is at the center of the coronavirus outbreak in Washington state. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

No measures comparable with the steps taken in China are being implemented in the United States, despite ample evidence exists that the virus is spreading rapidly and unchecked. Instead, attempts are being made to conceal the extent of the crisis. Reuters reported this week that the White House had ordered all federal health officials to “treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified.” Such classified discussions have been taking place since mid-January, when the outbreak in China was recognized as an emerging global risk. Lower-level officials and staffers without security clearances have been prevented from attending these meetings or participating in conference calls.

The Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) has authority over all health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). One of its primary responsibilities is to track the development of the COVID-19 epidemic and provide guidance nationally on the outbreak. These HHS meetings have been held in secure areas called Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facilities (SCIF), which are principally used by the intelligence and military community. Cell phones and personal computers are barred from these spaces.

According to Reuters, a former high-level official who worked in George W. Bush’s administration said: “It’s not normal to classify discussion about a response to a public health crisis.” Reportedly, the talks have centered on China and the scope of infections, quarantines and restrictions—not on how to respond to the spread of virus within the US.

Within the Trump administration, the health crisis ravaging China was initially welcomed as opportunity to ramp up trade war measures and boost the market share and profits of American-based corporations. In late January, when Hubei province was placed under an unprecedented lockdown, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross gloated on Fox Business that the outbreak would “accelerate the return of jobs to North America, some to the US, probably some to Mexico as well.”

Every action the Trump administration has taken concerning the COVID-19 pandemic has been geared to the interests of the financial markets and corporations. The utter disregard for public safety has been blatant. President Donald Trump baldly declared that the risk from the virus was “very low and that workers could continue to work, even if they were sick.”

Despite the fact that the virus had been spreading for several weeks in Washington state and other parts of the US, no straight answer has been provided from government officials as to why mass national testing is still not being carried out. Health officials have been denied the ability to even accurately assess the extent of COVID-19 infections and, on the basis of such information, recommend the appropriate response.

Mike Ryan, the World Health Organization’s head of emergencies, warned: “Hope is not a strategy. We are still very much in the up cycle of this epidemic… There’s clearly an indication that a systematic government-led approach using all tactics and all elements available seems to be able to turn this disease around.”

Such advice has been disregarded. Asish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, commented this week: “Our response [in the US] is much, much worse than almost any other country that’s been affected.”

Dr. Jha has been evaluating hospital preparedness in Massachusetts, where the tally of cases has reached 108, with 13 more confirmed yesterday. He stated: “Some of the best epidemiologists in the world are estimating that between 40 and 70 percent of adults will end up getting an infection. Even if we begin with that low end of 40 percent of adults in Massachusetts, that’s 2 million people getting infected.” He provided a conservative estimate of 200,000 hospitalizations in Massachusetts alone, when there are only 4,000 hospital beds available at any time in the state.

Yesterday, Amy Acton, the director of the Ohio Health Department, explained that evidence of community spread indicated that one percent of Ohioans are most likely infected with COVID-19. The office of Ohio Governor Mike DeWine stated: “Whenever you know of two people that have it due to community spread, then you can assume that one percent of your population has it,” This would suggest that there are over 100,000 cases in the state. The basis for the statistical assessment was a 2017 Morbidity and Mortality Report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio has declared a state of emergency as the number of infected persons in the city has more than doubled in 24 hours to 95. Health officials expect to see more than 1,000 cases by next week. In Chicago, the city’s massive Saint Patrick’s Day parades have been canceled out of fears of the disease spreading throughout the dense crowds. Governor Pritzker announced that all public gatherings with more than 250 people would be banned. An announcement of state-wide school closures in Illinois is expected soon.

Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, an infectious disease expert who has been warning for more than a decade that the world would face a pandemic, stated this week: “We are worse off today than we were in 2017 because the health care system is stretched thinner now than ever. And public health funding has been cut under this administration.”

The United States health care system lacks the capacity to treat the number of cases that will be filling the emergency departments of one city after another. Workers are expected to continue to work, despite facing the threat of the virus and a situation where every friend or colleague may be carrying the disease, which will then be further transmitted to their families and deeper into their communities.

Just this week, a worker in Indiana at a Fiat Chrysler Automobile plant tested positive for COVID-19 and was placed in quarantine at home. However, the plant, located just 50 miles north of Indianapolis and employing over 4,000 workers, announced it would continue production after cleaning the worker’s station. No steps have been taken to test the entire workforce.

The criminal negligence of the Trump administration, which serves only the interests of the corporate oligarchy, has all but guaranteed that there will be mass COVID-19 infection across the United States, and a terrible death toll. The working class must take matters into its own hands.

What Role for Taiwan in Act East 2.0?

Ashutosh Nagda

On 11 January, Tsai Ing-wen was re-elected as president of Taiwan in a landslide victory, with a continued legislative majority for her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Tsai and the DPP are expected to further promote policies that decrease Taipei's dependence on Beijing, and diversify its trade and investment partners. Is there then an opportunity for Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy (NSP) to deepen its engagement with India’s Act East Policy (AEP)?

Taiwan’s export-oriented economy and interest in diversifying traditional targets of investment under the NSP make it a natural collaborator for India. However, any such collaboration will have to take into account sensitivities linked to the India-China relationship, and India's adherence to the 'One-China' policy.

Convergences

President Tsai launched the NSP in August 2016 to mark the third phase of the 1994 Go South Policy. It aims to reinvigorate and expand Taipei’s ties with South and Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand; diversify trade; and move away from China. While India was not central to the first two phases of Taipei’s Go South Policy, it has now become an integral part of Tsai’s NSP. According to Taiwan's representative to India Chung Kwang Tien, India is “not one of” but rather "the most" important country for this policy’s implementation.

India’s AEP – announced in 2014 – is an upgraded version of its Look East Policy, with the objective to promote economic cooperation and cultural ties, and develop strategic relationships with “the extended neighbourhood in the Asia-Pacific region.” AEP, in its first phase, only looked at ASEAN countries. While Japan and South Korea have been engaged under the AEP owing to their strategic and economic importance, Taiwan has been on the sidelines because of Indian concerns about a Chinese reaction.

Economics is at the crux of both NSP and AEP. However, New Delhi’s engagement with Taipei in this regard has not been promising. In the last five years, trade between the two countries fluctuated within the range of US$ 5 to 7 billion. For example, the trade numbers went up from approximately US$ 6.3 billion in 2017 to US$ 7.3 billion in 2018, and then down to US$ 5.8 billion in 2019. Yet, the two countries are aiming to achieve a trading volume of US$ 10 billion by 2020.

Taiwan’s geostrategic location – it sits exactly where Northeast Asia meets Southeast Asia – can have “significant consequences” for India’s AEP and its emerging role in the Indo-Pacific. Taipei has shown increasing interest in the Indo-Pacific, with its Ministry of Foreign Affairs launching the Indo-Pacific Affairs Section as a component of the NSP. At the first Taiwan-ASEAN Dialogue in 2016, President Tsai announced Taiwan as “an important member of the Asia-Pacific region” and accepted its “responsibility to contribute to regional peace, stability and prosperity.” There is thus a clear overlap between New Delhi and Taipei's respective visions for the region.

In the Shadow of the Dragon

The Chinese shadow looms large over any potential up-gradation in India-Taiwan ties. China maintains its 'One China, two systems' principle with regard to Taiwan. While India has respected this principle, there has been no India-China joint statement on the subject since 2010.

India’s outreach to Taiwan takes place in the backdrop of its relationship with China; whether it is on the respect for territoriality and sovereignty, or India recently seeking to alter the rules of bilateral engagement. These circumstances have led to objections from both China and Taiwan. For example, Beijing objected to a delegation of Taiwanese women parliamentarians visiting India in 2017. Taipei, on the other hand, has raised concerns about New Delhi conducting its relations with Taiwan within the ambit of ties with Beijing. It has categorically said that it had no objections to India making friends with any country in the world, but “not at the cost of Taiwan's relations with India.”

In this context, Taiwan’s NSP has the possibility of opening up space for New Delhi to engage with Taipei without irking Beijing. Although Taiwan is seeking to move away from China through its NSP, Tsai has categorically stated that “it is not about competing with China.” This was further emphasised by James Huang, director of the NSP, who said that the policy did “not run counter to improving trade relations with China and the two can even be complementary.”

If, in the immediate future, any prospective engagement between the two focuses primarily on economics rather than strategic and defence cooperation, both India and Taiwan could keep the Chinese backlash to a minimum.

Conclusion

The AEP and NSP in their respective second terms give India and Taiwan immense space to collaborate and strengthen ties. Taiwan’s specialisation in electronics, machinery, and technology can add value to India’s healthcare and agriculture sectors, smart city projects, solar power, and the Make in India initiative. Taipei is already proactive in its approach to India. India must similarly consider the importance of loosening its constraints and adopting a more pragmatic approach – one that also takes Beijing's potential displeasure – in return.

Pulitzer Centre Persephone Miel Fellowship 2020 for Journalists in Developing Countries

Application Deadline: 10th April 2020

Eligible Countries: Developing Countries

About the Award: The fellowship, overseen by the Pulitzer Center in collaboration with Internews, is designed to help journalists from the developing world do the kind of reporting they’ve always wanted to do and enable them to bring their work to a broader international audience. The fellowship will benefit those with limited access to other fellowships and those whose work is not routinely disseminated internationally. Miel fellowships involve reporting from within the applicant’s native country—or following migrant communities from there to other locations.

Type: Fellowship (Professional)

Eligibility: The Persephone Miel fellowships are open to all journalists, writers, photographers, radio producers or filmmakers, staff journalists as well as freelancers and media professionals outside the U.S. who are seeking to report from their home country. Female journalists and journalists from developing countries are strongly encouraged to apply. Applicants must be proficient in English.

Selection: The fellowship recipient will be selected by the Pulitzer Center in consultation with Internews. Selection will be based on the strength of the proposed topic and the strength of the applicant’s work as demonstrated in their work samples. We are looking for projects that explore systemic issues in the applicant’s native country and that provide an overarching thesis, rather than individual spot-reports from the field.

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award: 

• The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting will provide a travel grant of $5000 for a reporting project on topics and regions of global importance, with an emphasis on issues that have gone unreported or under-reported in the mainstream media. Specific grant terms are negotiated during the application process based on the scope of proposed work and intended outcomes. Payment of the first half of the grant is disbursed prior to travel, upon receipt of required materials, and the second half on submission of the principal work for publication/broadcast.
• The Pulitzer Center will also offer $2500 to cover travel expenses associated with travel to Washington, D.C., to meet with Pulitzer Center staff and journalists and take part in a 2-day workshop. Depending on the specific needs of the fellow, this may occur prior or after the reporting takes place.
• The Center works with fellowship recipients to distribute their work across multiple platforms in the U.S. to reach the widest possible audience. Projects with multimedia components that combine print, photography and video are strongly encouraged.

How to Apply: Click here to go to the Pulitzer Center Grant Application webform.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

As oil prices plunge and coronavirus spreads, Russian oligarchy seeks to keep Putin in power indefinitely

Clara Weiss

On Tuesday, the Russian Duma (parliament) ratified proposed changes to the constitution and voted to annul the presidential terms of Vladimir Putin, which would make it possible for him to run for president again in 2024. The Federal Council approved of these changes on Wednesday. A national referendum on these changes is scheduled for April 22.

The constitutional changes were first proposed by Putin in his state of the nation address on January 15. Hours later, the entire Russian government resigned and Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev was replaced by Mikhail Mishustin.

The constitutional amendments are of a thoroughly reactionary character. Beyond formally expanding the powers of the parliament and the Constitutional Court—steps whose actual implications remain unclear—the amendments undermine the separation of church and state, and promote ethnic chauvinism and nationalism. A reference to God will be added to the Constitution, the role of Russian as the language of a state-forming ethnic group will be enshrined, and officials are barred from holding foreign passports and residence permits.

Article 67.1 of the Constitution will now state: “The Russian Federation, united by a many thousand-year-long history, is preserving the memory of its ancestors, the ideals and the faith in God transmitted to us, as well as the continuity of the development of the Russian state; it recognizes the unity of the state as historically formed.” Another amendment will lead to an article emphasizing that education of children in patriotism is a priority task for the state. Moreover, the “defense of the family” and the “defense of the institution of marriage as a union between man and woman” will be enshrined in the Constitution.

The speaker of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin called the changes “necessary given today’s challenges and society’s demands.”

In addition to approving these changes to the Constitution, the Duma also voted to annual the four presidential terms that Vladimir Putin has served since 2000. Despite a formal two-term limitation on future presidents, the motion states that someone who has served or is serving as president can “participate as a candidate in the [next] presidential election."

The motion was introduced by Valentina Tereshkova, the former cosmonaut and an MP for the ruling United Russia party, who pointed to “unpredictable risks” to the country which necessitated “reliable insurance.” The Duma passed her proposal with 382 votes, with 42 MPs abstaining but no one against. A proposal by the leader of the far-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), Vladimir Zhirinovsky, to dissolve parliament and call snap elections for September 2020, was voted down.

In a speech before parliament, Putin endorsed the motion. Underlying the sense of panic and doom in the Russian ruling class behind these moves, he emphasized that a strong presidency was “absolutely necessary” for Russia to maintain “stability” and prevent a “division of society.” He stated, “Incidentally, there are precedents for elections for more than two terms, including in the United States. And why? Look: the Great Depression, huge economic problems, unemployment and poverty in the US at that time, and later on, World War II. When a country is going through such upheavals and such difficulties (in our case we have not yet overcome all the problems since the USSR, this is also clear), stability may be more important and must be given priority. All the more so, let me repeat, when a country still has many problems.”

Valentina Matviyenko, a long-time ally of Putin and former mayor of St. Petersburg, stated on national television: “This proposal will calm everyone down. All this discussion of who would be the successor, what would happen to national security, these are all alarming processes.”

The moves toward strengthening authoritarian rule in Russia come amid a staggering escalation of the social and political crisis of the capitalist system, which is now being massively exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

Internationally, Russia is engulfed in an escalating conflict with US imperialism and NATO. In recent weeks, escalating military clashes in Syria have brought Russia and Turkey, a NATO-member, to the brink of open war.

On Monday, following the failure of Russia and Saudi Arabia to reach an agreement on world oil prices, along with the coronavirus spread, stock markets experienced the most significant crash since 9/11, with oil prices plunging faster than at any time since the beginning of the First Gulf War in 1990. “Black Monday” led to an immediate devaluation of the ruble, which it hit a four-year low on Monday.

The Russian economy is highly dependent on the price of oil and vulnerable to fluctuations of the world economy. About 60 percent of exports and 30 percent of GDP depend upon oil and gas. While Russian officials, including the minister of the economy Anton Siluanov, have tried to assure the population that Russia can sustain its economy and budget even with a price of $30 per barrel, it is clear that the emerging world economic crisis will dramatically accelerate what has already been a prolonged crisis of the Russian economy.

In the past five years, there has been a persistent decline of real wages as the Russian economy was in a recession from 2014 to 2016. The number of those officially classified as “extremely poor” has risen to 20 million, out of a total population of 140 million.

The crisis will be further accelerated by the social and health impact of the coronavirus pandemic, which has reached Russia officially in early March. As of Wednesday evening, there were 20 confirmed cases in 9 different cities and regions in Russia. However, as in many other countries this number is likely an understatement, given that testing has been extremely limited. In neighboring Ukraine, where only one coronavirus patient has been officially confirmed so far, a three-week full quarantine of the entire country was announced on Thursday. In Armenia, a near neighbor of Russia in the south Caucasus, all schools have been closed.

However, Russian officials continue to downplay the developing crisis. The vice-prime minister Tatyana Golikova, speaking on state television last weekend, called the possible spread of the coronavirus to Russia an “absolutely overblown story.”

So far, Russia has implemented very limited measures to contain the spread of the virus. In Moscow, where over 1,000 people are quarantined, events with more than 5,000 people are banned. Flights to and from four European countries with the most serious outbreaks (France, Italy, Germany and Spain) have been banned.

The attempts by Russian officials to downplay the crisis are the result of a combination of irrationality and complacency, and the very real fear of the massive social and political consequences of a broad coronavirus outbreak.

Hospital beds per 100,000 people

The restoration of capitalism in the USSR and decades of further cuts have devastated the health care system Russia and throughout the region. Medical facilities have been depleted of funds, meaning they have outdated and insufficient equipment. The number of hospital beds has been cut dramatically, even though Russia still has more beds per 1,000 than countries like Italy or the US.

In addition, the Russian population is overall in poor health. Since the 1990s, previously eradicated diseases such as tuberculosis and diphtheria have again seen outbreaks on an epidemic level. Russia has also been the site of the most dramatic HIV epidemic outside of sub-Saharan Africa, with estimates putting the number of those infected at 2 million or more. The average life expectancy is 71.6 years, 5 years less than in the US or EU. For men, it is only a little above 65 years.

The coronavirus pandemic, combined with the world economic crisis, is thus set to take a massive toll in the population, triggering mass social and political unrest. This is why the Russian oligarchy is trying to prepare by strengthening its authoritarian rule.

Amid protests and crises, Lebanon defaults on Eurobond

Jean Shaoul

Lebanon defaulted Monday on a $1.2 billion Eurobond. The decision by the government of Prime Minister Hassan Diab not to meet the payment comes amid a spiraling financial and economic crisis, protests, increasing poverty and other signs of social disintegration within the country, as well as the first deaths from the novel coronavirus.

Diab, a former academic and Sunni figure who is not formally aligned with any party, took office in January after months of mass protests broke out against Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a political stooge of Saudi Arabia, on October 17. Hariri had announced a tax on popular messaging applications, including WhatsApp, triggering a mass revolt across Lebanon’s sectarian divide against the raft of austerity measures imposed over the previous period, the growing poverty and unemployment, crumbling infrastructure and social services, and rampant corruption.

In announcing the government’s intention to default, Diab said that foreign currency reserves had fallen to “a worrying and dangerous level which pushes the Lebanese government to suspend payment of the March 9 Eurobond maturity because of a need for these funds.” He added, “The Lebanese state will seek to restructure its debts, in a manner consistent with the national interest, by entering into fair negotiations ... with all creditors.”

Just days earlier, Diab admitted that the Lebanese state had lost the people’s confidence after months of protests and the country’s economic collapse. He said, “To put it frankly, the state, in view of its current situation, is no more capable of protecting the Lebanese people and ensuring a decent life for them. To be transparent, I would say that this state has lost Lebanese people’s confidence.”

Nevertheless, he indicated he would carry out the attacks demand by international finance capital, saying, “We have no choice but to take the path of the Calvary, whatever the sufferings, because other options are much more dangerous.” As a first step, he has called in the IMF to provide “technical advice” and legal and financial consultants to advise on the way forward.

It marked the first time that the government has opted not to meet debt obligations to the international lending institutions, despite a series of crises, including the 1975-90 civil war. Lebanon’s $90 billion debt burden, one of the highest in the world, stands at 160 percent of GDP. Much of this is rated as junk or near junk bonds.

As of the end of January, Lebanon’s banks owned about $12.7 billion of the country’s outstanding $30 billion Eurobonds, with the central bank holding $5.7 billion and foreign creditors the rest, although Lebanese banks are believed to have since offloaded more of their Eurobonds to foreign lenders, who now hold more than one-third.

Foreign currency inflows have slowed, with foreign currency reserves officially valued at $31.5 billion at the end of 2019. But Morgan Stanley estimated that net reserves—or gross foreign currency holdings less the banks’ mandatory reserves and the country’s own holdings—were $11.5 billion at the end of 2019.

Lebanon’s pound has sunk in value, with the pound now valued at around 2,500 pounds to the dollar, to which it has been pegged since 1997, far lower than the official rate of 1,500.

The banks have for months been imposing restrictions on dollar withdrawals and transfers that are waived for the wealthy and politically connected but enforced on the broad mass of the population. Businesses, dependent upon credit or imports, have either shut down entirely, laid off staff or slashed wages. Many Lebanese are working just half their normal hours and thus getting only half their normal pay. Unemployment is running at 40 percent. Hospitals have run out of medicines and gasoline is rationed.

This takes place amid soaring inflation. While official estimates put this at 10 percent, the leading consumer association says that prices—already 30 percent higher than in neighbouring countries—have risen by 45 percent since October when the anti-government protests started, leading to a near halving of real wages.

According to surveys conducted by the Lebanese research company InfoPro, 220,000 jobs were lost between mid-October and late January, with more than 60,000 more people unemployed since the end of November. Half of the companies surveyed had cut wages by more than 40 percent. The World Bank has warned that the poverty rate will rise to 50 percent this year.

This economic disintegration now coincides with the coronavirus pandemic with which the country’s inadequate health system is ill-equipped to deal. Lebanon has thus far reported 68 cases and two deaths. In late February, the government closed schools and universities and halted flights for non-residents from Iran, Italy, China and South Korea. Yesterday, the government banned public gatherings, ordered the closure of restaurants and malls and barred passengers from France, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Spain, Britain and Germany from entering the country. These measures are set to put an ever-greater strain on workers’ living conditions.

There were protests across the country on Saturday when Diab announced that the country would default. For months, anti-government protesters have opposed debt repayment and an IMF bailout that would in practice rescue the banks’ rich Lebanese creditors at the expense of Lebanese workers. Protesters have attacked bank ATMs across the country in response to seeing their savings vanish into thin air as Lebanon’s currency plummeted.

This economic crisis, brought on by the post-civil war political settlement that essentially gave each of Lebanon’s major sects a stake in plundering the country and exploiting the Lebanese masses, has been exacerbated by US imperialism’s drive to assert its hegemony over the region and roll back Iran’s influence by means of crippling economic sanctions and criminal military violence.

Washington and its regional allies are undoubtedly attempting to manipulate these tensions to further their regional aims. Tehran responded by supporting the government’s crackdown on the protest movement in an attempt to defend the influence of Hezbollah with which it is allied.

Hezbollah, a Shi’ite, bourgeois-nationalist group, played an important role in defending Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against the US-orchestrated war of regime change which has employed right-wing Islamist forces, recruited, trained and armed by Washington’s regional allies—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Turkey.

The Shi’ite group became the largest political party in Lebanon’s parliament after the 2018 elections. This, under Lebanon’s sectarian constitution, gave it considerable powers of patronage and limited Hariri’s freedom to manoeuvre. While Hezbollah opposed the mass demonstrations, it has met with their leaders, expressing agreement with their demands and offering them support, in the hope of restraining and deflecting the protest movement and retaining its own credibility.

Now, Lebanon’s traditional financial supporters, the US, France and Saudi Arabia, are determined to use the economic crisis to bring the country firmly into the anti-Iran Sunni axis under Riyadh’s leadership and eliminate Hezbollah as a political force in the country. They are demanding sweeping “reforms”—privatisation, the ending of all government subsidies and tax hikes—before providing $11 billion in loans and grants.

Two weeks ago, Washington ramped up its attack on Hezbollah, blacklisting several companies and individuals it says have links with Hezbollah as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists” in another round of sanctions against Iran’s ally. The designation freezes US assets of the named individuals and companies and prohibits Americans from doing business with them. Among those targeted are senior officials in Atlas Holdings and 11 companies affiliated with it, including petrol and pharmaceutical businesses.

Hezbollah has vehemently opposed an IMF bailout that would be subject to stringent conditions but has backed the government’s decision to default and called upon the Lebanese people to support the government.

Ali Daamoush, a member of Hezbollah’s Executive Council, said, “The government’s decision not to pay the dues and to restructure the debt instead is less negative than paying, because paying without finding solutions to secure liquidity might lead to bankruptcy and to heading to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to be subject to its conditions.”